Petition Make it a legal requirement to rear-face until minimum aged 4

The Government should raise the minimum age for forward-facing in height-based car seats from 15 months to 4 years old. The current guidelines for height-based seats say that children must be rear-facing until they are over 15 months old.

More details

There are concerns that small children's necks are not developed enough to protect the spinal cord, potentially risking severe injury from forward-facing seats.

When forward-facing in a crash, some research suggests that children’s heads are subjected to stress loads of 180 to 300kg. When rear-facing they are subjected to only 40 to 80kg which is a huge difference.

This research suggests that rear-facing lowers the risk of death or serious injury to 8%. It should be illegal to forward face before the age of 4 unless under certain circumstances, such as a disability.

This petition is closed This petition ran for 6 months

738 signatures

Progress of the petition towards its next target: 738 of 10,000 signatures required to get a government response

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10,000 signatures required to get a government response

Date closed 6 July 2022
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