It's designed to be used with children aged four to 12 years. This is a belt guide consisting of two red clips and a piece of belt. Senior Trading Standards and Senior Fire Brigade officers have looked at BeltUpp in detail and state that there is nothing to substantiate any suggestion that the device is unsafe.’ Smart Kid belt
The additional buckle is the first thing you see when you open the car door so there is no confusion as to how to undo it.
However, strapping in your child with an additional belt means you’ll have to release a second buckle, and you won’t be able to release your child in one action (a requirement of both R44 and R129 car seat regulations).Ī spokesperson for BeltUpp told us: ‘BeltUpp has an extra buckle to undo but it is in fact quicker and easier to get a child out from this system than it is when they have a harness and a centrally placed buckle. It’s designed to provide better support for a sleeping child and to stop them from slipping out of the seatbelt. With the BeltUpp installed, your child will have an ‘X’ pattern across its chest. It’s attached to the lap and shoulder straps of the vehicle seatbelt and inserted in the respective guides on the booster seat. The BeltUpp is an additional safety belt for high-backed booster seats. We contacted BuckleSafe! for a comment but were unable to reach anyone. Our intent is to help people move from A to B in the safest way.’ While it can be frustrating to have to stop regularly to buckle your child back in, we can’t recommend these devices if it means your car seat is not meeting the legal requirements for use.Ī spokesperson for Roadtrip Essentials BuckleUp Belt Lock Buckle Guard told us: ‘We will look into this in more detail and if necessary redesign the product.
Most modern cars have a warning system that will alert the driver if anyone sat in the back does not have their seatbelt attached, so we feel that this is a good way of keeping an eye on the status of seatbelts in the back of the car. This slows down the removal time and means the seatbelt buckle no longer meets the legal requirements. However, with the buckle guard in place, these devices require you to either locate the included plastic key or remove your own car key from the ignition to activate the release button. This is so that, in the event of a crash, it will speed up the rescue and removal of occupants from the car. Regulations on the use of adult seatbelts state that the buckle should be easy to use and capable of being released by the wearer in a single movement. In order for a parent to release the device, you need a separate key (or your own car key) to slot into a narrow opening to activate the main seatbelt button and release the buckle. Brands available in the UK include BuckleSafe! and Roadtrip Essentials BuckleUp Belt Lock Buckle Guard. It’s designed to stop children pressing the buckle button while you’re driving, and is marketed at any children who are strapped into their car seat using the adult seatbelt (such as with a group II/III car seat). This is a plastic guard that's placed over the vehicle’s main seatbelt buckle, and then the belt is clicked into it. Verdict: Not recommended unless you own a car seat that meets R129 regulations – check the label Seatbelt buckle blocks If you have an R129 car seat, chest clips are permitted. Adding an extra chest clip means you have to open two buckles. That’s because the regulation states that you should be able to release the child from the harness restraint in one operation. What’s more, if you own a car seat that claims to comply to the R44 car seat regulations, using a chest clip could mean you’re breaking the law.
Our car seat testing experts were concerned that this could potentially increase dangerous amounts of pressure on the soft area of your child’s abdomen in the event of a crash. However, as most child car seat harnesses come with padded shoulder pads that cover the straps, you may find you need to mount the clip quite low, so it sits across the stomach and not the chest. It’s designed to stop your child slipping their arms out of the harness. This is a plastic clip that’s attached to the integral harness to hold the straps together, ideally at chest height.