PARIS: Parents should keep their children in rear-facing car seats at least until the age of four, according to a British study released yesterday.

It is now common practice in many countries to switch babies to front-facing seats when a child is about 9kg, the average weight of an eight-month-old boy, said the study.

British general physician Elizabeth Watson and Dr Michael Monteiro of Sunny Meed Surgery in Woking, near London, reviewed key studies from Europe and the United States to see if any safety patterns emerged.

They found that small children were consistently safer in a car when they were looking where they have been rather than where they were headed.

"Excessive stretching or even transection (cutting) of the spinal cord can result if a child is involved in a head-on crash while in a forward-facing car seat," the researchers said.

Data from Sweden showed that some children in forward-facing booster seats who died in accidents could have survived had they been facing the back.

A review of US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data on crashes between 1998 and 2003 involving 870 children concluded that rear- facing seats were better at protecting babies up to 23 months.

Unlike forward-facing seats, rear-facing car seats keep the head, neck and spine fully aligned so the force of the crash is distributed over these body areas, noted the study, published on the website of the British Medical Journal.

The researchers called on manufacturers and retailers to increase the availability of rear-facing seats for older children.

They also called for a change to the current weight-range labelling of European seats which suggests that both seats are equally safe for children over 9kg. -AFP