10 International Car Rental Tips

Tip 5: Bring your own car seat if bringing a child

Granted, this particular international car rental tip only pertains to parents bringing their child along. However, ever since we’ve been bringing our daughter along on our trips, we had to address her safety, especially in the car. And in our experiences, most of the places we find worthwhile to visit (especially natural attractions like waterfalls) typically involve having our own rental car or riding in a tour operator’s car for long distances. Therefore, we must secure our girl to that child car seat. In addition to safety, we know it’s illegal (at least in the United States) to drive around without the child restrained in a properly installed car seat. And even if the laws concerning child seats are laxed or non-existent internationally, it’s good practice to have the car seat anyways, especially considering how often deaths from traffic accidents tend to occur worldwide.

We’ve been bringing along our lightweight, easy-to-install, five-point-harness car seat ever since our daughter was about 8 months old, and we still use it even though it’s been at least four years since. Basically we stuck with it because that five-point harness is said to be the safest for the child. It also has anchor straps that can buckle to the frame of the main back seat of the car so it’s less likely to become detached from the car in a crash. We also purchased a car seat bag with shoulder straps (like the one by J.L. Childress) because that allowed us to carry the car seat on our backs to free up our hands in those situations where we’re moving around without a rental car (e.g. at airports, subways, train stations, etc.). Of course it helped that our car seat was also lightweight and not overly burdensome (although it is bulky).

Anyways, by bringing our own car seat, we have also saved money on car rentals. Granted, we’re willing to accept the inconvenience of lugging that car seat around to save on the cost here. We’ve explored the idea of renting the car seat directly with the car rental agency, but that almost always entailed paying a per-day rate for the priviledge. Indeed, when we’ve done the sums, the overall cost for long term hires would often exceed the cost of buying such a car seat outright. We’re aware that some rental car agencies like Hertz may include a car seat for free as part of the rental, but certain conditions apply, and we still have to price out the cost of the overall rental to see if it makes sense from a cost standpoint regardless.

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