Baby/child bike seats, trailers, etc.

[shootingstar]

http://www.bikebikeblog.com/2013/03/biking-with-your-baby-onboard_21.html

http://blogs.calgaryherald.com/2014/06/12/after-popularity-of-trailers-old-school-child-carrying-bike-seats-are-making-a-comeback/

Written by cycling fathers.

[colorisnt]

Some cool stuff here.

I always was in a child seat behind my parents from infancy, basically. They brought my sister and I EVERYWHERE. One of my first memories is being out on my Dad's road bike with him on Fourth of July weekend when I was 4. In Europe, it seems like everyone has a baby seat.

We watched a dumb couple of people bomb around the trail with a cheap kids trailer hitched to the back of on of their dubiously maintained bikes. The BF and I were all, "This is not going well" watching them start and stop at a trail head. It didn't take long for us to catch up with them and one minute they were there and the next minute they weren't there. They had run the bike off the trail and flipped the trailer. Thankfully, everyone was okay. I think the key with anything is to take all the necessary precautions and be careful. These people had no clue what they were doing.

[Jolt]

Definitely some good info...but I would be curious to know what people do before the kid can hold his/her head up. Has someone figured out a safe way to take the really little ones (carseat in trailer/bakfiets?)? Seems like this would be more of an issue for urban families who use bikes for transportation...for people riding recreationally I would imagine the preferred option is to leave the child with the other parent/a sitter/etc. if at all possible while going out for a ride.

[lph]

Yep, small reclining car seat, if you can fit it inside. Not many do. We used one like that until our son was about 9 months old. We dismantled the built in seat in our Burley Solo and simply lashed each corner of the car seat securely to each corner of the trailer. For gentle riding on paved roads and smooth gravel roads it was great, he lay there reclining like a prince :-D

Once he outgrew that seat the next size was too bulky to fit, and didn't recline much either, but he was pretty much big enough by then to use the regular seat. The car seat solution was lot better and more comfortable for him though.