Hi all Bought my little copen back in July 2009 with a view to probably only keeping it a year, however I didn't realise how much I'd fall in love with it! Three years later and we're still going strong however I now have the challenge of finding a suitable car seat so my 1 year old son can ride with me. Anyone else had this issue?
That airbag thing is interesting, I wonder why Daihatsu never included an off switch.? An airbag is dangerous to children and small adults because of the explosive force when it is deployed. Personally in the event of a crash I would rather my child went forward into an airbag rather than the dashboard. . I've driven my Copen with my three year old grandson in the passenger seat. I used a child seat that lowers the seatbelt, provides a boost and followed the advice above.
Thanks dag & Rex for your posts. I was gutted when I was told I couldn't disable the airbag and therefore couldn't have a rear facing car seat but I assumed now he's big enough for a forward facing one it'd be ok. The task for this weekend is to see if I can find one that isn't to high and doesn't result in him being 2 inches from the dashboard! @DaG - Out of interest which car seat do you use for your 3 yr old grandson?
My car seat wouldn't be suitable for a 12 month old, it's one of these. The correct one For a twelve month old would be this type http://www.argos.co.uk/wcsstore/argos/images/49-9072541MRUC1183975X.jpg This is a difficult problem really and you will have to decide. Any car journey can be dangerous for a child whatever car they are in and wherever you seat that child. As I said, personally, I would rather seat a child with an airbag in front of them instead of the dash. However I would only do that if I felt that the child was a good distance back from the airbag to avoid the initial explosion. In the case of the Copen the seat does end up a good distance from the airbag so I'm happy with that.