The BeSafe philosophy – Safety first
Develop and test
BeSafe has been testing seats in collisions for nearly 20 years. Every year we invest many resources in developing and testing our products, and this is our guarantee to you – that we give top priority to safety. We collaborate with leading authorities on traffic safety, such as the Swedish National Road and Transport Research Institute at Linköping University, Trygg Trafikk (“Safe Traffic”) in Norway, TNO in the Netherlands and ADAC in Germany.
Facing backwards
As the leading manufacturer in Scandinavia, BeSafe has adopted the policy that children’s car seats now and in the future must be as safe as possible. To achieve maximum safety, your child should sit in an exclusively backward-facing child’s seat until the age of four years. Look at the page about BeSafe iZi Kid. In Norway in recent years an increasing tendency has been noted towards using combi-seats right from the age of nine months. This is not a desirable trend. It is our belief and our responsibility that HTS should help to ensure that children sit in the safest possible position.
Our knowledge and experience, gathered from twenty years of ensuring the safety of children in cars, convinces us that there are many advantages for safety in backward-facing seats for children aged between nine months and 2 ½ years.
Incorrect use of children’s car seats
Incorrect use of children’s car seats is generally a major problem, and combi-seats are no exception. In many seats on the market it is possible among other things to remove the internal belts when converting the seats from backward-facing to forward-facing. BeSafe considers this highly inadvisable, as it entails considerable risk of incorrect use. When we developed our own combi-seat, it was crucial to safety that it was not necessary to replace the belts. In addition, BeSafe is the only manufacturer to recommend using combi-seats facing backwards at least up to the age of 2 ½ years. Look at the page about BeSafe iZi Combi.
For those who decide nevertheless that the child is to sit facing forwards in Group 1, we recommend buying a seat that is only designed and constructed for use facing forwards. Look at the page about BeSafe iZi Combi.
Surveys of users carried out in Norway and elsewhere in Europe have shown that as many as 70% of children’s car seats are used or installed incorrectly, and thus even the safest children’s car seats become unsafe in unfortunate circumstances.
In Sweden, one of the most advanced countries with regard to traffic safety, practically all small children face backwards in the car up to the age of four years. The advantages can be seen in the accident statistics. There is no reason why others should give their children less protection.