moving a car seat from car to car

I'm puzzled by the couple of threads at the moment about car seat fitting.

We don't own a car, but we do regularly use a car sharing service, where you book one of the cars that lives nearby, by the hour or day, and only pay for it for the time you use it. I guess we use a car about once a week, at the moment.

We haven't bought a car seat yet, but I have been assuming that they are relatively easy, at most a few minutes work, to fit, and to move from car to car. We don't use the same car all the time and we can't leave a car seat in one of the share cares anyway, so we'll have to be able to move our car seat into whatever car we are using that day.

Is this going to be a problem? I'm dismayed by the thread talking about people getting their car seats professionally fitted - surely it can't take as long, or be as difficult as all that?

Is there stuff I don't know about car seats?

Can anyone recommend a seat that fits into a small car (the share cars are mostly honda jazz's), and can easily be fitted and removed?

DH re-installed ours last week as we had to take them out, and to put Emily's in, took him about 10 minutes. I suppose since you'll be doing it often, you'll get the hang of how it's done.
We prefer to have them professionally fitted, for peace of mind really. We have Qld Ambulance fit them, and the guy there shows us to how fit them correctly. And it's free.

It's a really good idea to get the seat fitted professionally the first time, or at least checked by a professional fitter after you've done it. Until you are familiar with how to do it, it can be tricky, and it's easy to not do it tight enough. But once you know how to do it, it's fine to do it yourself, and you'll find you get quite quick at doing it. We have changed seats around from car to car often and not had a problem.

ETA We have found the ones that are just forward facing are easier to install than the reversible ones. But the reversible ones are really handy early, especially as rear-facing is a lot safer and most of those seats allow rear-facing until 12 kgs.

OK, that's good to know. I was worrying that we might not be able to use a car at all, if it was impossible to move them around once fitted.

I do think we'll just have to get good and fast at it. At least we'll be fitting it to the same kind of car all the time (or nearly all the time), so the adjustments should be the same.

I am planning to get a combo rear/front facing seat, and use it in the rear-facing position for as long as possible, because I read it's safer. Don't want to spend a load of money on something we'll not use often, though, that's why I want to get the combination one.

depending where you are I went to kidsafe in the ACT and was shown how to fit the seat in and that was with my first bub since then I have always installed them, worth getting shown exactly how to do it though as i followed the insturctions first time and still was not entirley correct.

Now however i can install one in about 5 mins no probs and tight and correct.

I found out that 96% of child restaints in NSW are installed incorrectly. And studies have also shown that lat year 1600 children were either seriously injured or killed because they were in a car accident and there child restraint was not fitted correctly. This information came from a RTA Authorised Fitting Station and apparently you can be fined up to $250 and loose 3 points if a child restraint is not fitted correctly.
These Authorised Fitting Stations charge about $30 to install one and about $15 to check one that has already been installed (if you have done it yourself). You can even have them come to your home for about $50. Its not a lot of money for piece of mind really.
I think if you pay attention to how they do it and keep notes especially if you have to do it often you would at least get the right method from scratch and like someone said the more you do it the better you would get at it.

i have been fitting and moving car seats for ages - my mum used to do FDC - had a tarago, and depending on the age of the kids she had, we'd swap and change the seats all the time. we had a friend who worked for RACV at the time, and he checked each new type of car seat we fitted (i was prolly about 16 when i started helping) - i now fit and remove the car seat in my car for my bro's kids all the time depending on what we're doing, and who is coming out with us at the time. i am confident in fitting the seats we use

having said that, RACV friend will be asked to check the first time we install the capsule - it's not a type i've used before, and would prefer to know it's in properly. i'll also do the same when we put new carseat in rearward facing as i haven't done this in several years - front facing, i'm more than ok with

i think it really depends on how often you do it - you just get used to it - and know your own limitations - if you're not a strong person, you might struggle getting the anchor strap tight enough...

I wouldn't be surprised if many are incorrect, but that percentage sounds high. A lot of baby shops have authorised fitters and they'll do it for free if you buy the seat from them. Also I'm pretty sure the ambos in each state all do it for free too. Once you've been shown how to do it, it's pretty easy to do yourself, and if you do have difficulty, you should at least know what's not right (once you know how tight it should be, it's easy to tell when it's not tight enough). One tip I was shown by the fitter was that you can, if are having trouble, kneel on the seat while you are anchoring it - it gives you a lot more leverage to get it nice and tight.

I agree, just take careful note of how it is installed the first time - do you have a friend to show you?? seeing as it would be a bit hard to have someone inspect when you have the car.

i can do it in my sleep now and do it every 2 weeks when DH takes the car on gas 3 hours away for work etc. There are a couple of things that if you are not used to it, you may miss - stabiliser bar is a biggie -

Start getting used to them now!!!

Just another thing, you'll have to make sure is that the car youre using has anchor points in it, otherwise you can't use the carseat at all. Also if it has side airbags, you're rearward facing carseat must be in the middle, forward facing is ok on the sides with airbags.

So, do all car seats fit in all cars??
We only have a small barina now and will be hopefully getting a new car but not until bubs arrives, so if I buy one will it fit in both cars?

if you get one that fits your barina, it will fit a larger car, but not necessarily vice verse

I am sure the cars we use will have anchor points, as they are all nearly brand new Hondas. Can't remember whether they have side airbags, but I suspect the newest ones do have those, I'll check them out.

I have been told by a friend that there are very few car seats on the market that fit small cars. I'm planning to just get the one she has, as she did check them out beforehand.

I think we'll get the carseat, then one day when we're using a sharecar for the day, we'll take it and the carseat to the RACV and get them to fit it properly and show us how to do it. Then hopefully we'll be all set to set it up once baby arrives.

Thanks for the advice, everyone.