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Different strokes.
I was going to say that generally 4 year olds aren't mature enough (because I don't think that they are) but the video was about a 3 year old. For longer trips, I don't feel confident that the average 3-4 year old can sit up straight properly for the entire trip or that if they were to drop something, not lean forward to pick it up, which could introduce slack in the seatbelt, or not slouch when sleeping, etc. But that is a vast geralization, and JMHO.
4 years and 40 pounds is generally considered the bare minimum for booster seats per the NTHSA and others. What really sucks is that there aren't more options for harnessed seats for bigger kids in the US. Everyone on this board can probably afford a Britax for each car, but a lot of people can't. The other problem is that the vast majority of kids outgrow seats by height well before they hit the weight limits. In Sweden they keep kids rearfacing until they're like 5 and their crash injury statistics are so much better than ours.
ETA: Some of the rules are obviously stupid, though, since I don't meet all of the requirements for using a seatbelt without a booster (all seatbelts hit me in the neck no matter what I do, and 5' 3" isn't all that short). And in some cars, your Cadillacs and such, my knees don't bend properly at the seat edge when I'm sitting allt he way back.
Last edited by SEC_Chick; 11-15-2006 at 01:42 PM..
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