Hi, this is Ali Akbarian from Mobility Engineering. Once again, back with another question-and-answer series. We're on to Q and A number three, which is very exciting, keep the questions coming in people we love to answer your questions. The more questions we answer means, the more people that are going to be safe out there, which then means we're basically going towards our mission and achieving our goals. So, please keep the questions coming we love them.

So, this question is regarding child restraints in baby seats. This one comes from Charlie at heifer baby down in Victoria, a little bit of a side note in the plug, the heifer baby wonderful company down in Victoria. They also deliver child restraint training as well. They actually deliver the child restraint training that we've developed in partnership with us down there. And yeah, please feel free to look up heifer baby they have great products, great people, a great service, and a wonderful team to be working with. So, thanks Charlie for the question. The question has been regarding the headrest. Can you please clarify if headrests, in vehicles, which is something like this, ahead restraint can be removed when installing a capsule or rear-facing car seat, or even a forward-facing? We understand in boosters, must be there.

So, you've given a good point there, great work, Charlie so you've already shown that you know what you're talking about. So, I will clarify a few of the questions and answer them for you as well. So, in regards to the headrest and the head restraint, the first thing is this little device here. This is a separate device, which is to the seatback. So, this is the headrest or head restraint. Most of the time in the technical side of the industry, the engineers call it head restraint, because what it is actually doing is designed. So, when you have an accident, you move forward, and on the reverb, you back into this, your head will back into it and it will restrain your head. So, it will stop your head from flicking back, and hopefully, then avoid any neck injuries. And at the same time, it's nice and soft so it can hold basically absorb some of the energy and protect what's valuable inside of the head, which is the brain.

So, should we be removing it when we're feeding baby seats like this one here? This is actually an interesting one, and it's also, and that's why I thought I'd do a video. It's also very commonly done practice within the industry of fitting industry and also a very common point of confusion and question.

So, first of all, headrest, or head restraints. The number one most important thing to realize is these are a legal requirement within vehicles. So, these have been tested by an Australian designer, which is the federal rules for designing and manufacturing cars in Australia. There is a whole Australian design rule designed around head restraints. It tells you how strong they've got to be, how soft they've got to be and what the dimensions are, where they're supposed to be located. All of those things are written in that one rule all about the head restraint, and that rule is applicable to all passenger cars. So, which has all the modern passenger cars in our day and age. So, if the headrest is there, you've really got to leave it there. If you take it off, then that vehicle at that point in time no longer complies with that rule which technically makes it illegal.

However, in some cases it might be okay, please listen to see where it would be okay. So, far we shouldn't be removing the headrest. However, there are times you can. So, first of all, the headrest is made for the person. So, if I'm sitting here, you can see if I sitting there and I moved forward in an accident, I'll move back. I will impact the headrest and that will protect my neck and my head as well. In a baby seat or a child restraint now, when I say babysit, or child restraint, I'm talking about one with straps, which has like a little red button over here. So, a baby seat that looks like this. So, in one of these you have…. if you will hear, but very strong reinforcing, almost like a Chevy relevant truck or something. So, you've got very strong reinforcing channels here, making sure that this thing is very, very strong. And so, what that means is in a child seat, the head part, the head section that is holding the head in place, that actually a head restraint on its own.

So, when you are traveling in this, you don't necessarily need that head restraint to be there because this is a tested head restraint that is going to be used for your seat. And that's also the case in something like this, which is another product. Now you don't necessarily have those big Chevy rails, but if you look, they've done a similar kind of thing, but the inverse. So, they've also got strong reinforcement there on the plastic. They're not sticking out they're sticking in, but they do a very similar kind of function. But what's the same thing between this and that one. You've got the straps that are built-in and you've got the red button between the legs.

So, these are child seats that the top part of the seat is also a headrest or a head restraint. So, what does that mean? That means I can get away with traveling around like this with that seat in there. However, as I said before, we don't really want to take these out because one of the problems with taking them out is one they get lost, two when we take this seat out if I want to come and sit here now, and I have an accident and that's not there because someone's forgotten to put it back or they might've lost it or something, I am in a very, very serious potential danger. So, if I have an accident what's going to happen is I'm going to move back and my neck can potentially keep going and end up with a broken neck or broken back. So, that is something that we want to avoid at all costs.

So, in general, if we want to remove the headrest, we can, but what I recommend is a few steps. First of all, actually, before we do that step, I'll also mention the last thing, which is the booster. And then we'll, we'll go onto the steps. The booster, now, one thing that's different between this seat and that seat is you see this seat does not have the straps built-in, and it does not have a little red button between their legs over there. This is what we call a booster. A booster uses the seatbelt and that's it. Now a booster If you look at a booster, this is sort of flimsy plastic. That's not a bad seat. It's one of the tops of the range seats on the market so it's not that it's a flimsy seat it's just, it does not need reinforcing. It's not a head restraint like that seat over there. So, what that means is they don't have to make it as strong to hold a hand in the event of an accident. So, with a booster seat, you must at all times like Charlie pointed out in that question, you must at all times have a headrest there so the booster seat is well protected and well supported. So, I'll just move inside, and I'll talk about the things that we need to remember when we are fitting with the headrest, and if we think we might need to move it.

So, as difficult and as challenging as it may be, if you can try your best to fit it in with the head risks or have restraints. If you need to remove the head restraint to fit the child restraint, that is no problem you can do that. And what I would recommend is after the child seat is fitted, then the next thing you would do is again, try your very best to put this back in while the child's seat is in place. As I said, it's not required for the child seat, however, it's required for everybody else and all the time. And also, as mentioned in this video, somebody in that, sorry, in that question, somebody in that question had been pulled over by the police and had been advised that their vehicle was not road-worthy because that headrest was not there. Now it's an interesting one because technically if you want to go right down to the letter of the law and the black and white law, the police officer was actually right, because the thing in order for that thing to be roadworthy, it must meet all the Australian design rules.

And once you pull that out, it technically doesn't have it in there anymore so it technically doesn't meet the Australian designers. Yes, we're going right down to the letter of the law, and in this case, if you want to look at safety, if this was not there with a baby seat, with a strap and red button between the legs, from a safety point of view, not a real major risk. However, with a booster seat or for anyone else, it is a major risk. So, we want to avoid taking it out for everybody else. So, if we do take it out, what do we do? Well, I would strongly recommend if you are a fitter or if you are just an end-user at home, or somebody has some kind of reminder system or something to remind you to put that back in and don't lose it because if you lose it, they're very expensive to buy new.

And it's very, very difficult sometimes to justify going and buying something that's being lost. So, we see it all the time we get lost all the time. If you can avoid taking off the headrest, try and leave the headrest there at all costs. However, if you do need to take it off, you can only do it with a seat that has inbuilt straps and the red little crutch buckle button there. If it is a booster seat, or if you're just sitting on your own, you must have the headrest there. It is very, very important for the safety of the person that is sitting there.

Thank you very much for listening to our Q and A series. As I said, once again, please forward through your Q and A questions and we will find the answers for you, and we'll answer them in anything to do with child restraints, disabled restraints, transporting people all around the world. That's basically what we want to do. We want to give you your freedom, and your independence back. So, please ask any questions you want we're here to answer them. Thank you very much, and thanks for listening, Ali from Mobility Engineering.