How to use a child seat: Explained with the Skoda Slavia

Ever since we first drove the Skoda Slavia, we were impressed with the dynamics and the comfort offered by the sedan, in addition to the performance it offers. Now the sedan has proven to be the safest car on sale in India, as proven by the recent GNCAP crash test results. Understandably, this will likely steer potential buyers looking for a family car in the direction of the Slavia, which is why we have demonstrated how to use a child seat with the Skoda sedan.

Car safety devices for children have been in existence since the early 20th century, but it was only since the early 1960s that the idea of a child seat as we know it took shape. Using a child seat helps immensely to keep children safer in cars in the unforeseen case of a collision. Not all child seats are the same – they tend to cater to different age groups and have different locking mechanisms to be attached to your car. Most of them tend to be compliant with ISOFIX seat anchors that are present in cars on sale, and our long-term Skoda Slavia has ISOFIX mounts present in the rear seats. 

As explained earlier, each child seat varies in its compatibility. To demonstrate fitting a car seat to our Slavia, we used a child seat rated for children from 0 to 3 years of age, mounted in the rear-facing position. To fit the child seat seat to your Slavia, you need to line up the rails of the child seat with the ISOFIX seat anchors until the seat is clicked into place. You need to follow this procedure on both sides and the ISOFIX mounts have a green marker to indicate if the seat is locked into place. Once both the seat rails are locked in, the top tether of the child seat needs to be hooked into an anchoring point which is present behind the headrest of the Slavia where you would normally find a parcel tray in a hatchback or SUV. Finally, you need to belt up the child seat using the seat belts by running it around the back of the child seat. Using a child seat is a must to keep your children safer when travelling in a car, as it reduces the risk of injury massively in case of an accident. 

With the renewed impetus on safety, thanks to Global NCAP’s Safer Cars for India initiative, crash safety scores have gained greater importance as well, since they help buyers be informed about the safest vehicles on sale. There’s no better example of this than the Skoda Slavia. Based on the MQB-A0-IN platform, the Slavia scored five stars for adult occupant safety as well as child occupant protection, and the sedan even managed to marginally better its own sibling, the Skoda Kushaq by a few decimal points, in the tests for adult occupant safety, while scoring similarly to the SUV when it came to child occupant protection. Considering that the Kushaq was already an SUV that scored five stars in the GNCAP crash tests, the Slavia’s higher crash safety scores are commendable, making the sedan a sensible buy for you and your family.