Car seat safety

Information on car seat safety for children.

• Car seats and booster seats help protect your child from serious injury while travelling in a car.
• There are best-practice recommendations for car seats to ensure children are kept as safe as possible. These recommendations are not always the same as the law.
• It is important to find out the safest category of car or booster seat for your child.
• Babies and young children are safest in a rearward-facing car seat. Your baby should stay rearward-facing for as long as they fit – ideally until two to three years of age.
• Shoulder markers are a good way to check if your child is safe in their car or booster seat or if they have outgrown it.
• The ‘5 step test’ is a series of questions that checks whether it is safe for your child to travel with an adult lap-sash seat belt only. Your child must pass all five steps to be considered safe without a booster seat.
• Most children will not pass the ‘5 step test’ until they are aged ten to twelve years old.