Backseat Is Best for Kids 12 and Younger

As parents, we're told to keep our kids in various child-safety seats until they reach 4 feet 9 inches tall, which is the height at which they can ride in the backseat without a booster seat. But then what? The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's guidelines say that children should ride in the backseat through age 12, but a lot of parents are ignoring them.

Related: One-Third of Families Use Booster Seats Incorrectly

As a mom of a 12-year-old, I get it. My son has grown several inches over the summer and no longer seems like a little boy. He's now as tall as some of my adult friends, so shouldn't he ride in the front seat? The answer is no. But when I'm telling my tween again and again that he can't sit in the front passenger seat (he seems to think I'll forget my car-seat technician training under persistent badgering), I need good answers to counter his questions.

Thankfully, I found some on Dr. Natasha Burgert's KC Kids Doc blog. In her blog post on why kids should always ride in the backseat, Burgert, a pediatrician, explains that although tweens may look like mini adults, they're not, especially when it comes to their bone development.

Seat belts are designed for adults and protect passengers by being routed across some of the strongest parts of our body: the pelvis and sternum or breast bone, Burgert said. Hip bones in children aren't fully developed until they're 12 or 13 years old.

"It is the pointy, angled area on the front of developed hips that keeps a lap belt low and snug," she writes. "On a child with rounded, relatively soft hips, the belt will 'ride up' onto the abdominal cavity during a [motor vehicle crash] — even if the belt starts in the right place! This shift of the lap belt's proper position increases the risk of injury to abdominal organs."

With the sternum, some children have mature bones by age 11, but for others it can take until age 17 to reach full maturity.

It's not just a child's physical development that's important when it comes to kids riding in the backseat; it's also the safer place.

An analysis of crashes found that children in the front seat sustained more severe injuries than kids in the backseat, according to a March 2011 report in the American Academy of Pediatricians' journal, Pediatrics.

Airbags present their own danger to kids riding in the front passenger seat, according to the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control. The airbag's rapid inflation can lead to severe injuries or even death in kids riding in the front passenger seat, according to NHTSA.

Armed with these reasons, parents can stand firm when explaining to their tweens (again) why they need to ride in the backseat. Make riding in the front seat a rite of passage for your child — when they turn 13.