Child Restraint Options for RV Seats
Dave SolbergDescription
For most trailers and motorhomes, there are limited options when it comes to seating that can accommodate child restraints. Chairs and couches are either side/rear facing or freestanding, leaving you few legal solutions for safe and comfortable child seating. In this free lesson, RV expert Dave Solberg teaches you his favorite trick for customizing your RV seats to accommodate baby and toddler seat restraints.
All you’ll need is a trip to the hardware store for an inexpensive piece of equipment. With Dave’s help and a bit of ingenuity, you’ll have the little ones buckled up and ready for adventure in no time!
Something to consider when traveling in a motor home. If you are traveling with an infant or a young child that needs a car safety seat or a child safety seat, where do you put them? If you do truck and trailer you're gonna put them inside, use the seat belts just like you would on an automobile. But in a motorhome, there's very few forward facing secure chairs. The driver's and passenger chair, but you're gonna be in those. So where do I put a safety seat in this? The sofa is in length with the unit so it's not forward facing, the dinette is a free-standing dinette here. Even if I have a booth dinette, a lot of those don't have seat belts. So if you're gonna travel with somebody that requires a child safety seat, you're probably gonna have to customize your vehicle. What I recommend is go to a home improvement store, a hardware store, and get what's called a D loop or a loop ring. It's a secure plate with a ring on it that you can actually bolt through the floor and create your own seatbelt mounted directly to the floor. You can put it underneath the sofa. So you hide them a little bit underneath a lounge chair and use that with an extra seatbelt or a certified safety strap that you can secure that child safety seat onto the floor when traveling down the road.
Hi there! Thank you so much for this video! We are having the hardest time trying to figure out how to get our children’s car seats in our Class C RV safely. I’m wondering if you have a video of how to install these loops you’re talking about? Or if we could go into any auto shop and have them do it for us? Or if this is something we will have to figure out ourselves. Thank you!
And, the seat has to be forward facing. No side-facing car seats for kids or adults.
With all due respect this is a video that scares me to death. Creating an attachment point that is not bolted to the frame could easy break loose in an accident. I would caution anyone to use this video as a recommendation.