what is the law on front mounted child seats

I was told today that it is against the law to use a front mounted child seat on your bike in the
USA. Is this true????

> I was told today that it is against the law to use a front mounted child seat on your bike in the
> USA. Is this true????

Perhaps it should be, but as far as I know it isn't. It's incredibly dangerous to have a child
within reach of the handlebars; it's also very dangerous to have weight shifting around
unpredictably on the front of a bicycle. They're just not designed for that.

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles http://www.ChainReactionBicycles.com

"Leslar" <leslarus@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f4220074.0306012057.1f7dc0c@posting.google.com...
> I was told today that it is against the law to use a front mounted child seat on your bike in the
> USA. Is this true????

Haven't seen any law against it (YMMV)...but I found it VERY uncomfortable. Knees poking way out to
the side to pedal.

And almost impossible to get the same kid protection in a front seat as in a rear mounted seat.

It is more sociable, though.

Pete

I've made a bad experience with a front mounted child seat. I was riding in the woods with my 3
years old son on a bike lent by a friend. The child seat was not only front mounted but also quite
basic. After a while I heard a rattling noise, and thought for a second that I had a small piece of
wood trapped in the front wheel. Then I heard my son scream, and I realized that his foot was
actually doing the noise. His foot was badly hurt, though fortunately not broken.

The second part of the story has nothing to do with cycling but I can't resist telling it. The story
happened during our holidays in former Czechoslovakia, some 2-3 years only after the communists
left. Our friend brought us to the nearest hospital. We waited about 10 minutes. An X-ray was done,
the leg was treated, and a plaster (is it the right word ? my english has limits) was made. We
didn't pay one single cent and were not even asked our names. Our insurance never knew about it.
This was a relatively poor country, but basic health was well provided for.

Jacques

>leslarus@yahoo.com

wrote:

>I was told today that it is against the law to use a front mounted child seat on your bike in the
>USA. Is this true????

It's a very bad idea but it's certainly not a federal offense.

Inmate #1- "I'm in for kidnapping and air piracy. What are you in for?" Inmate #2- "They got me on a
RICO case and money laundering. What about you?" Inmate #3- "Unlawful transportation of a child. I
put my 3 yr old in a front mounted child seat on my bicycle."
<g>

Regards, Bob Hunt

> I was told today that it is against the law to use a front mounted child seat on your bike in the
> USA. Is this true????
>
There are fifty different states, each with their own set of laws. If the person who told you about
seats didn't know that, then they don't know very much. What the laws in any state are, I don't
know. Nor probably do most policemen, so any law is unlikely to be enforced.

Jeremy Parker

"Mike Jacoubowsky" <mikej1@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:wvBCa.597$rs6.165@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com...
> > I was told today that it is against the law to use a front mounted child seat on your bike in
> > the USA. Is this true????
>
> Perhaps it should be, but as far as I know it isn't. It's incredibly dangerous to have a child
> within reach of the handlebars; it's also very dangerous to have weight shifting around
> unpredictably on the front of a bicycle. They're just not designed for that.

It appears to be an extraordinarily common design in the Netherlands, and has been for a while.

"Hunrobe" <hunrobe@aol.com> wrote in message news:20030603024408.07446.00000781@mb-m22.aol.com...
> >leslarus@yahoo.com
>
> wrote:
>
> >I was told today that it is against the law to use a front mounted child seat on your bike in the
> >USA. Is this true????
>
> It's a very bad idea but it's certainly not a federal offense.

Why do you think it a very bad idea?

On Tue, 3 Jun 2003 18:57:57 +0200, "Robert Chung" <invalid@nospam.com> wrote:

>It appears to be an extraordinarily common design in the Netherlands, and has been for a while.

Not extraordinarily common, really. Most people get a rearmount first, and the frontmounts are
for riding with two kids. And then there's the 1 front plus 2 rears configuration which is
downright rare.

As long as you're going at the kinds of speeds that are usual here (ie, 14 mph absolute max, more
usually 10-11), it;'s apparently not that big a problem.

Jasper

"Jasper Janssen" <jasper@jjanssen.org> wrote in message
news:7flrdvg1mmj9n8ui71ervj976ftnvqe2u1@4ax.com...
> On Tue, 3 Jun 2003 18:57:57 +0200, "Robert Chung" <invalid@nospam.com> wrote:
>
> >It appears to be an extraordinarily common design in the Netherlands, and has been for a while.
>
> Not extraordinarily common, really. Most people get a rearmount first, and the frontmounts are
> for riding with two kids. And then there's the 1 front plus 2 rears configuration which is
> downright rare.

I saw one this weekend--and I mean a Bobike Mini mounted on a 't Mannetje Filiduo, all seats
occupied. I saw a couple of other Filiduos without the front Bobike. And while I saw more rear-mount
seats, I would say that the ratio of rear seats to fronts was maybe 5-to-1, surely less than
10-to-1. In the U.S. that ratio might be 100 times larger. It was in that context that I was using
"extraordinarily common," sort of like saying that SUV's in the U.S. are extraordinarily common
although they comprise far less than half of all vehicles.

I also saw a couple of Bakfiets with kids in them -- didn't see anyone with two kids in the front of
a Bakfiets and one in a rear-mount seat, but it wouldn't have surprised me all that much if I had.

Back to the issue of relative risk: I've looked and I can't find any data that suggests that there's
any safety difference between the two designs (front and back child seats), just as I've never been
able to find any data that shows a difference between carrying a child in a (rear) seat and in a
trailer. Do you know of any? I'm an agnostic on the "safest" way to carry kids, but since Mike J.
and Bob Hunt appear to be so sure that there was a difference, I was guessing that they must have
seen the data.

> Back to the issue of relative risk: I've looked and I can't find any data that suggests that
> there's any safety difference between the two designs (front and back child seats), just as I've
> never been able to find any
data
> that shows a difference between carrying a child in a (rear) seat and in a trailer. Do you know of
> any? I'm an agnostic on the "safest" way to carry kids, but since Mike J. and Bob Hunt appear to
> be so sure that there was a difference, I was guessing that they must have seen the data.

Data? No, not in any organized fashion. Just seen the results (and people coming in wondering why
their bike isn't stable and what they can do to make it ride better when they've got a bunch of
weight on the front end that it wasn't designed for).

Don't think there's reliable data on car crashes caused by dealing with kids screaming in the car
either. The point is that kids can be a serious distraction to dealing with road conditions. Yes,
it's great to be able to bring kids along, but a bit of common sense isn't such a bad thing.

--Mike-- Chain Reaction Bicycles http://www.ChainReactionBicycles.com

"Mike Jacoubowsky" <mikej1@ix.netcom.com> wrote in message
news:LRpDa.2046$ub2.649@newssvr19.news.prodigy.com...
>
> Data? No, not in any organized fashion. Just seen the results (and
people
> coming in wondering why their bike isn't stable and what they can do to
make
> it ride better when they've got a bunch of weight on the front end that it wasn't designed for).

Back in the Bay Area I used to put my daughter in a rear-mounted seat on a mountain bike. Since then
I've ridden a bike with a front-mounted child carrier and I didn't think it was particularly
unstable. A bike with a front-mounted seat handles differently than one with a rear-mounted seat but
not so oddly that it ever caused me trouble. In fact, getting her into and out of the seat was
easier with a front seat since the bike is more stable. Two important things: the bike that this
Bobike Mini was mounted onto was an upright step-through city bike with swept back handlebars (not a
mountain bike with straight bars and especially not a road bike with drop handlebars); and my
daughter was probably less than 10 kg at the time. She was also trained not to shift around and
fiddle with things, and that applies pretty well both to front- and rear-mounted seats.

> Yes, it's great to be able to bring kids along, but a bit of common sense isn't such a bad thing.

I absolutely agree. Part of that common sense is not putting a front-mounted seat on an
inappropriate bike, or putting an inappropriately-sized child in a front-mounted seat (height of the
child matters more than the weight, in my opinion).

I searched around for quite a while for info on trailers vs. seats, and front-mounted seats vs.
rear-mounted seats. Like you, I couldn't find any comparative data. I think the reason is that
parents are careful enough and exhibit enough common sense that accidents are (thankfully) rare. I'm
sure that there *are* differences between trailers and rear-seats and front-seats -- I'm just not
sure which is safer or how big and important the differences are. Part of what I do for a living is
to analyze data for small differences in relative risk, and one of the things I've learned is that
common sense doesn't always translate well into actual odds ratios. A side-effect of that is that I
try not to intimate that people who put their kids into front-mounted seats (or rear seats as
opposed to trailers) are taking unacceptable risks with their kids. When people ask me about child
seats, I relate my experiences but tell them I haven't yet come to a final conclusion. I just don't
have enough information to know.

"Hunrobe" <hunrobe@aol.com> wrote in message news:20030604182912.27030.00000958@mb-m06.aol.com...
> >"Robert Chung" invalid@nospam.com wrote
>>
> >Why do you think it a very bad idea?
>
> For the same reason I think a 25-40 lb handlebar bag is a bad idea. Adding that much weight to the
> front wheel makes the bike handle poorly. Adding that same 25-40 lbs to the rear wheel doesn't
> have quite as bad an effect on the handling. I don't view it as a child safety issue so much as a
> bikehandling issue.

Before I rode a bike with a front-mounted child seat I was a bit apprehensive about the handling,
too. Now I think the 25-40 lb handlebar analogy isn't quite appropriate, for a few reasons.

First, these seats are limited in the size of kid they can accomodate (the kid's legs have to be
short) so we're really talking about kids less than maybe 10kg max or so. Second, the seat sits
behind the handlebar, not over the front wheel. And third, most of the bikes on which these things
get attached have very different geometry than most bikes in the U.S. BTW, some of these seats
(though not the one I experienced) are attachable to the top tube (or a top tube-like attachment)
rather than the handlebars.

Most of the bikes that use this style of seat are upright city bikes with backswept bars, relaxed
head tube angle, big fork rake, and longish wheelbase. Being more used to normal drop-bar road
bikes, I found that in these things the steering was a tad light for my taste. Popping a tot into a
front-mounted seat actually made handling a bit less squirrely.

To be fair, I had limited exposure to this set-up, and my memories date from two summers ago. My
daughter is too big for such a seat now. I'm simply pointing out that one shouldn't dismiss
front-mounted seats out of hand based on experiences with big handlebar bags.

"Hunrobe" <hunrobe@aol.com> wrote in message news:20030605092859.04578.00000483@mb-m11.aol.com...
> >"Robert Chung"
>
> wrote in part:
>
> > I'm simply pointing out that one shouldn't dismiss front-mounted seats out of hand based on
> > experiences with big handlebar bags.
>
> And I'm simply pointing out that if a front-mounted seat will only work on
a
> very small percentage of the bikes most rbm posters ride- few here ride "upright city bikes with
> backswept bars, relaxed head tube angle, big fork rake, and longish wheelbase"- then to recommend
> them to the NG isn't a
good
> thing.

Hmmm. You've misunderstood what I wrote, for which I accept all the blame. I should have
been clearer.

I wasn't saying that a front-mounted seat will *only* work on a city bike. If you look back
upthread, I was writing that for city bikes a front-mounted seat *improves* handling (in the sense
that it makes the bike handle more like what I'm used to). I mentioned it because it seemed
paradoxical to me at the time, not because I was suggesting that this was the only bike it would
work on. I've seen front-mounted child seats here on MTBs, so I know that people do this -- it's
just that my only experience with them was on a city bike.

BTW, if you're at all interested in seeing what I'm talking about, here's the model that was on the
bike that I rode: http://www.bobike.nl/en/ouders/assor...obike_mini.htm

And here's a link to a different model that attaches to the top tube:
http://www.centricsafehaven.com/description.htm

Thus far, I haven't recommended anything other than that one shouldn't dismiss front-mounted seats
out of hand.

OTOH, since you do believe that they are a detriment to handling, I'm intrigued by your statement
that a very bad handling bike is not a safety issue. Or did I, in turn, misunderstand?

"Robert Chung" <invalid@nospam.com> wrote in message news:3edf9ba0$0$11690$626a54ce@news.free.fr...
>
> Hmmm. You've misunderstood what I wrote, for which I accept all the
blame. I
> should have been clearer.
>
> I wasn't saying that a front-mounted seat will *only* work on a city
bike.
> If you look back upthread, I was writing that for city bikes a
front-mounted
> seat *improves* handling (in the sense that it makes the bike handle more like what I'm used to).
> I mentioned it because it seemed paradoxical to
me
> at the time, not because I was suggesting that this was the only bike it would work on. I've seen
> front-mounted child seats here on MTBs, so I
know
> that people do this -- it's just that my only experience with them was on
a
> city bike.
>

I've been intrigued by these seats and as such have talked with several people on the street that
I've run into using them. All of the ones I've seen were being used on mountain bikes. Each of the
people I spoke with were highly enthusiastic about the seats and said their children really liked
being in front. I did not get the feeling that they were difficult to handle by either the people
themselves nor by watching them being used.