Bringing lie flat child restraints to Australia
Improving the health, safety and well-being of medically vulnerable babies and their families
Lie flat child restraints
Due to complex medical vulnerabilities, some infants and young children are unable to be transported in vehicles using Australian standard car seats.
Lie flat child restraints (also referred to as car beds and lie flat car seats) enable transportation of infants and young children who for medical reasons are unable to be transported in an inclined or semi-inclined position. They allow travel in a 180-degree flat position, oriented perpendicular to the direction of travel.
There has not been a lie flat child restraint available in Australia since the Steelcraft Swinger in the 1980s.
Due to this situation - as Julie’s story below shows - some families are limited to the use of non-emergency ambulance transport, with no options for transport in their family car, preventing them from accessing the community.
Julie's story
"As a parent myself who lost two daughters to Type 1 Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), the devastation of not being able to go out with my family before my daughters died, lives with me forever.
Every time we went out it would be in an ambulance to hospital, because that was the only way my children were able to be transported flat on a stretcher.
Having lived in a rural and remote area, it was a burden to the ambulance system to come to my rural property then have to take us over 100kms to the nearest hospital to receive specialist treatment.
With a proper car bed/seat, events like this could be prevented."
Julie Cini, CEO, SMA Australia Inc
Addressing the gap
Through a joint effort, MACA, the Royal Children’s Hospital (Melbourne) and Medifab have been working together since 2019 to make lie flat child restraints available for infants and young children unable to in an inclined, or semi-inclined car seat, due to medical vulnerabilities.
The extensive work program has included:
- a legislative and regulatory review
- a global desktop review of lie flat child restraints
- stakeholder forums
- the development of clinical guidelines
- visits to overseas product manufacturers
- AuSAP crash testing.
AuSAP assessment
The Matrix Light 2 was crash tested as part of our Australian Safety Assessment Program (AuSAP) at the Neuroscience Research Australia - Transurban Road Safety Centre, over the period 2021 to mid-2023. Further crash testing was undertaken by Transport for NSW - Crashlab, in 2025.
Following this, MACA obtained support from Jané Group in Spain to supply the Matrix Light 2 to Australia as a special purpose car seat.
Establishing a model for access to lie flat child restraints
From 2023 to 2026, the Royal Children’s Hospital implemented a pilot to enable access to lie flat child restraints, supported by clinical guidelines for assessment of need.
Supported by a Transport Accident Commission Community Road Safety Grant, MACA led a project to investigate a supply and support model for access to lie flat child restraints in Victoria. This was undertaken in collaboration with the Royal Children's Hospital and Medifab - who now supply the AuSAP assessed Matrix Light 2 for Australia.
