car seat

[oregoncruiselover]

I am travling with my three year old and we don't usually take a car seat on the plane, but :mad:ehat do we do when we are on port? We are going to the Carriban and going to usr some taxis or maybe go on a tour. I guess i don't like the idea of carrying a car seat to the beach. Any thoughts???

[sail7seas]

Taxis in the Caribbean will not have car seats for your child.

 

[klfrodo]

Some taxis won't even have seatbelts

[Bonnie J.]

Welcome to cruisecritic!

We cruise a lot and can only remember ONE new mini van/bus, for 12, with seat belts in St. Kitts last month. Never see them in a cab. So a car seat will just sit on the seat so the 3 year old can see out. There is nothing to secure it with. It isn't worth bringing as its purpose is defeated. Sorry but that's the way it will be.

[Krazy Kruizers]

Welcome to Cruise Critic.

Car seats -- don't expect them anywhere.

When using a cab -- just place the 3 year old between your husband and you and hang on to the child.

[Marie51]

Some taxis won't even have seatbelts

 

Agree......some taxis will not have seatbelts and if you go on an excursion on a bus there will not be seat belts on the bus.

[6rugrats]

OP - this is a constant debate on the family forum here. I have never had a problem finding a cab with seat belts any place in the world. If the first one doesn't have working seat belts, move on to the next one. Your child is not safe if they are not in one. You cannot "hang onto" your child in an accident; the laws of physics don't change because you are on vacation. Are they big/old enough for a booster?

[toxicfairy]

I am SURE i will be flamed for this but I am 45 years old and my brother who is 3 yrs younger was the first in our family to even have a car seat! It was an ugly black seat with a "roll bar" that pulled down infront. no 5 way buckle not even a 2 way buckle :D we all survived to tell about how we were not strapped in EVER . Sorry I know I know times have changed ! But man they were the days ! ( :D my brother even played with toy guns :eek: ) personally I would not lug the seat around with me. Of course that is just me ,but I did managed to get my two to the ripe ages of 22 and 19...so far ;) !

[akfishergirl]

I am SURE i will be flamed for this but I am 45 years old and my brother who is 3 yrs younger was the first in our family to even have a car seat! It was an ugly black seat with a "roll bar" that pulled down infront. no 5 way buckle not even a 2 way buckle :D we all survived to tell about how we were not strapped in EVER . Sorry I know I know times have changed ! But man they were the days ! ( :D my brother even played with toy guns :eek: ) personally I would not lug the seat around with me. Of course that is just me ,but I did managed to get my two to the ripe ages of 22 and 19...so far ;) !

 

Times have changed!! my kids in their 30's never had car seats!! I still laugh at my folks telling me about what they had that was "called a car seat" when I was a baby... it hooked over the back of the front seat in the middle... heck all it would have done is launch me if we had been in an accident....LOL

 

We are traveling with our grandson this summer he is still in a booster seat, and it will be traveling with us... much easier than attempting to "rent" one in ports where we have cars rented!

[dforeigner]

I am SURE i will be flamed for this but I am 45 years old and my brother who is 3 yrs younger was the first in our family to even have a car seat! It was an ugly black seat with a "roll bar" that pulled down infront. no 5 way buckle not even a 2 way buckle :D we all survived to tell about how we were not strapped in EVER . Sorry I know I know times have changed ! But man they were the days ! ( :D my brother even played with toy guns :eek: ) personally I would not lug the seat around with me. Of course that is just me ,but I did managed to get my two to the ripe ages of 22 and 19...so far ;) !

 

Not flamming you! I was never placed in a car seat and seat belts were never used when I grew up. Times have changed due to awareness and preventive education/measures. Have you even had to tell a parent that their child died after being ejected from a vehicle? Or that they are paralized for life or suffered permanent brain damage?

 

Everything is fine until it happens. Trust me, the level of medical care in the caribbean is not up to par with the US. Why? Mainly because of funding.

 

Yes, we have little ones and we do take care seats with us on vacation. Do not want to lug a car seat through the islands? Book an excursion through the cruise line where buses is mainly used.

[sail7seas]

Why book buses? They don't have seat belts of car seats. If the bus is in an accident the unbuckled child is no safer in a bus than a taxi in the Caribbean or anywhere else.

 

I still don't understand why so many school buses don't have seat belts.

 

[Mom2B&Z]

Why book buses? They don't have seat belts of car seats. If the bus is in an accident the unbuckled child is no safer in a bus than a taxi in the Caribbean or anywhere else.

 

I still don't understand why so many school buses don't have seat belts.

 

There is a great description of why buses are safer than cars for an unrestrained child on the family forum. The short story is if the vehicle does not have seat belts (and in that I mean it was never built with them, not that they were removed after the vehicle was constructed) then the vehicle is designed to protect the occupants without them. Granted the occupants need to be a minimum size (usually the size of a 4 year old child), but the protection is there. Buses are usually much larger than any other vehicles on the road, so unless it is a bus to bus (or equivalent) collision, the other vehicle will suffer greater damage.

It is physiologically impossible to hold a child of any size in your arms in a moving vehicle. A quick search of You Tube will show you videos of unrestrained children on airplanes being tossed around like a book bag. The same applies to an unrestrained child in a motor vehicle. Yes it is a pain to lug around a car seat, but as others have said, the laws of physics do not change because you are on vacation and the health care is not what we have at home. At the beach, I have made arrangements for the restaurant, museum etc to store the seat (as they must be kept out of the sun) in a safe place until our return. Heck I found seatbelts in Mexico where the taxi drivers told me they cut them out to fit more people in the vehicle. If you look, you will find them.

I travel with car and booster seats because I trust them more than the health care systems elsewhere in the world.Top tethers can be tricky, but a seat installed forward facing even without a tether is safer than one without.

To those who say "I didn't have a car/booster seat and I survived", the ones who didn't survive can't tell us their story. Car seats and boosters save lives.

FWIW I volunteer and am certified as a CRST (car seat technician) in Ontario.

[sail7seas]

Wow, Okay, thanks.

Great explanation.

 

 

 

(Just for the record ----- I don't have any young children so no need for car seats here lest someone think I an endangering a child.)

 

[dforeigner]

Why book buses? They don't have seat belts of car seats. If the bus is in an accident the unbuckled child is no safer in a bus than a taxi in the Caribbean or anywhere else.

 

I still don't understand why so many school buses don't have seat belts.

 

 

Pretty simple. Mass/ energy displacement. If you don't believe me, ask Sir Isaac Newton. He was a genius when it came to this stuff.

 

Sorry, I forgot that he hasn’t been around for a while.

 

Therefore, let’s review his second law of Motion.

 

Everyone unconsiously knows the Second Law. Everyone knows that heavier objects require more force to move the same distance as lighter objects.

 

 

 

However, the Second Law gives us an exact relationship between force, mass, and acceleration. It can be expressed as a mathematical equation:

 

FORCE = MASS times ACCELERATION

 

 

 

This is an example of how Newton's Second Law works:

 

Mike's car, which weighs 1,000 kg, is out of gas. Mike is trying to push the car to a gas station, and he makes the car go 0.05 m/s/s. Using Newton's Second Law, you can compute how much force Mike is applying to the car.

F=1000 X 0.05

Answer = 50 newtons

[Gathina]

You will not find a car seat in the Carribean or Central America in any taxi. I had a home in Jamaica for a long time and they pack the children in like sardines and the same on the chicken buses and taxis in Costa Rica and Nicaragua and Brazil. I've seen as many as 15 crammed into a "micro bus" (something like a minivan) and they don't care if you are sitting on top of each other.

[Mom2B&Z]

You will not find a car seat in the Carribean or Central America in any taxi. I had a home in Jamaica for a long time and they pack the children in like sardines and the same on the chicken buses and taxis in Costa Rica and Nicaragua and Brazil. I've seen as many as 15 crammed into a "micro bus" (something like a minivan) and they don't care if you are sitting on top of each other.

 

You will if I'm in town with my children ;).

[puddles99]

If you decide to use a booster seat, you might consider something like this: http://www.bubblebum.co/us/

 

We bought one for our cruise a few weeks ago and used it in our rental car in Florida and on our Jeep tour in St. Thomas.

[Bonnie J.]

First, my boys never had booster seats- they're in their 40's. Question: how are they connected in a car/cab? Do seat belts secure them? How do you secure them if there are no seat belts in the car/cab?? Sorry but all of the cabs we've been in, in the Caribbean, have not had seatbelts and we cruise a LOT (only 3 times so far this year!)

[Gathina]

Don't be surprised when they ask you for a whole lot extra money..they do..even if you have a suitcase they charge you more and they if you dont want to pay it then dont be shocked if they dont bother with you.

 

Their country, their rules, their terms, their culture..it's the way it is. Personally, in a crowded situation like that a car seat probably isn't going to make that much of a safety difference and you wont be able to buckle it in if there are no seatbelts. They run the taxis according to what the norm is, not the American way. I grew up as one of those who didn't have a car seat and a lot of people I know did. If that car seat takes up what two passengers would normally sit on, I guarantee you they will charge you the price of two passengers PLUS the child. I am not trying to be snarky, but I've lived in those countries I mentioned and that's pretty much standard operating procedure with some rare exceptions.

 

I'd leave it at home. They aren't going to care what your custom or rules are in the USA.

 

 

You will if I'm in town with my children ;).