On yesterdays Teletext it mentioned that tucked on the back of the legislation but not given prominence is the fact that soon it will be illegal to carry more people in the vehicle than there are seat belts.

I'm surprised that isn't already the case Steve

I hope the car rental companies have got their act together for this one. We hired a car last summer and had to take our own booster seat with us as at that point renting them wasn't an option with any of the big companies.

Maybe Im just a bit thick but Im finding the wording on this - the use of the word "and" a bit ambiguous?

Does it mean Children under 12 and children under 4ft 5in need booster seats
Or does it mean children who are both under 12 and under 4ft 5in?
My kids are both under 12 but over 4ft 5in.
Do they need booster seats
Also - wasnt there something about kids fitting these criteria not sitting in front seats as well?

All children under 4'5" need to use a booster seat and be sat in the back of the vehicle UNLESS they are 12 years of age or older (when it is supposedly safe for them not to use a booster seat - though I'm not sure why that would be!!

Mind you, persuading my small 11 year old in secondary school that he needed a booster seat would have been nigh on impossible.Fortunatley his birthday arrived in the nick of time.

If yours are over 4'5" they don't need booster seats regardless of age.

The whole thing has been a nightmare. Local school has had to go out and buy boosters for school trips and cubs/brownies/footie teams etc where car-pooling was widely used has proved a nightmare to manage especially in those circumstances where one parent used to take, and a different one collect. Has IMHO made multiple car use worse - rather than encouraging folk to share and keep vehicles off the road.

Have several friendss who ditched car seats years ago & have now had to go and buy a whole new set for marginally under-height children (for the sake of a few months in some cases where they grow so fast)

If it's not safe for them to be in a car without a booster seat - why is it magically OK for them to be in a taxi or coach anyway?????

Your child no longer needs a car seat when he/she reaches 4ft 5in (135cm) or 12 years, whichever is reached first, so if yours are over 135cm you don't need seats. The criteria about the front seat is that if they need to be in a car seat then they can't go in the front seat if there is a passenger airbag. The full details of the legislation can be found on the Department of Transport's website at http://www.thinkroadsafety.gov.uk/campaigns/childcarseats/childcarseats.htm

The age 12 is to do with the child's bone structure. Below that age the bones are still softer and can't cope as well with an adult seat belt.
I agree that the taxi exemption doesn't make sense from a safety point of view. Why is a child safe in a Mondeo that is being used as a taxi but not in his/her parent's Mondeo? Glasgow City Council is actually making taxis carry car seats. The week the legislation came in a number of drivers were given 14 days to get seats or they would have had their licences revoked.
My children are 2 and 6 and the 6 year old has always been in a car seat so we haven't had a problem but I know a lot of parents have had problems getting older children back into seats. The publicity surrounding the legislation wasn't great (I heard much more about the changes to postal charges) and I think there are still a lot of confused parents out there. The Boys Brigade in our church now has a pile of boosters in the corner every week because of the car pooling!

I chased up some clarification. Under 3's are not allowed in a car unless they are in an approved child seat fixed to a forward facing seat.

I pointed out that not everyone lives where there is adequate or affordable public transport and not everyone has a car, many struggle to pay their food bills.
I asked why it is now always illegal for me to offer a family with a young child a lift home in bad weather and was told that they understood the problem but while they sympathised they also had to close as many loopholes as they could.

I responded by querying whether denying a child the right to a lift in a warm safe car instead of a walk along dangerous rural roads in inclement weather was a breach of its Human rights. Guess what. They went quiet.

Steve, if you check the child safety website, you'll find that in an emergency a child can be transported in a car without a car seat but they have to be restrained by the adult belt. Good point though in the situation you describe. I would go for the transport in car with seat belt in your situation.

Cate, Hate to say this but you are not quite correct.
The law states that under 3's must always be in a child seat unless they are in a Taxi or Private Hire vehicle.
So I am not able to drive the family, but if they can afford it, an immigrant more used to driving on the other side of the road, moonlighting as a minicab driver, is fine, otherwise they have to walk.

The response from the government representative was:-

I take the point that you make but there's not much I can say. We do understand that lifts cannot be offered in the same way as they were previously. And we are always aware that not everyone has access to local transport or their own car.

But as the use of child seat/booster is mandatory, then it is logical that we cannot leave things so loose that we open up cracks that some will seek to exploit.

As you say, where children are under 3 years, they cannot travel without baby/child seats. For those 3 years and over, if there is no child seat/booster, then where there is "unexpected necessity over a short distance" an adult belt will be the alternative in a rear seat. But 'unexpected' and 'necessity' mean just that and a court may not always agree what qualifies.

Makes me wonder how I managed to grow up and later how my 5 kids survived as we had a microbus with no seatbelts and never a problem.

Has there been any update on this?