traveling by RV~what about child car seats?

[momtotwinglesx4]

Please excuse my ignorance on this subject I know nothing about RV's/campers/trailers, but thought it might be an economical way for my large family of 7 to travel. My dh has a friend who may be selling an old (late '70's) RV~it needs alot of work, but dh is a mechanic and would be do most of it himself. After looking at it I'm very concerned about the safety of passengers. Maybe new RV's are different, but I saw no passenger seating with seat belts or anyway to secure a car seat at all, let alone properly! Are RV's somehow considered to be like school busses? No restraints necessary? (Which I find very wrong, btw) My children have NEVER traveled without being properly secured in a car seat or seat belt, so I'm hoping I may be missing something here. Can someone enlighten me please?

Thanks ever so much!

Sue

 

[tim5055]

A lot has happened in the last 25 years!

While the cost of vintage RVs may be low, you seem to have identified one of the shortcommings - they don't measure up to modern safety standards.

New RVs do in fact have seat belts, airbags and other safety devices. While many people who have driveable units (unlike trailers) feel they are in there living room and have no problem walking around, remember you are in a moving vehicle use your seat belts.

You may be able to retrofit seatbelts into some of the seats, but it is not going to be easy.

Good luck

 

[tortuga]

We love traveling with our 4 livly and young children , and started out with an older used Winnebago. We had seatbelts already installed at our table - and if your doesn't, I'll bet you can have these installed at any good RV repair place. We lowered the table top for more leg room and put the car seats there. Even now in that we are out of car seats no one is allowed to get up or remove their seat belt without permission. We have had 2 incidents that required us to brake sharply in the past and a tire blow out on the freeway just recently. In all cases I feel the seatbelts saved us from certain injury. We have been traveling this way for 6 years now and wouldn't trade it for anything.

Have fun!
Tortuga

 

[Wislodgers]

I agree that you can have seatbelts fitted into the RV. My Dad and brothers converted a coach bus into a fabulous RV. They gutted the bus out and started from scratch. First thing the designed was seating and seatbelts. They even installed a "captains chair" that fit my youngest son's carseat the best. We have taken 3 trips to Florida and 1 out to California(48 hours driving straight through!) All of our kids are troopers about traveling and know they have to stay belted up. It is a great way to travel with kids! (Also you can use your own bathroom, not a questionably clean one along the road!) We travel with 6 adults and 5 kids this way!

 

[BibbidyBobbidyBoo]

I agree- it shouldn't be TOO hard to install seatbelts- we've done that on late model trucks we had in the past and it wasn't all THAT difficult to have done- but might be costly. Just depends.
We looked at some late model motorhomes yesterday- low 80's and late 70's and they all had seatbelts (2 on the couch, and on both of the passenger seats with the table -usually fold down table so it wouldn't be in the way-and the seats were like bucket vehicle type seats with plenty of room to put carseats.

So if the one you are thinking of buying is like this- maybe it wouldn't be too hard to put lap belts in that you could use carseats with?