This post is sponsored by Drive Now
The school holidays have just finished and I am already thinking about what to do for the next.
- Where shall we travel?
- How shall we get around?
- Will I need to hire a car? If So:
- Which company offers the best price?
- How will we navigate around?
- What is the cost of insurance?
- What about child car seat restraints?
- Do we need one?
- How much will it cost?
- What about the rest of the road rules?
There are so many car hire companies, where do you start and how do you get all these questions answered?
When I start my research and planning for a family holiday abroad I use a comparison site. There are ones for flights, for hotels and for car hire like the DriveNow comparison website.
DriveNow compares the prices of all the major car hire companies like: Hertz, Europcar, AVIS, Budget, and Thrifty. They also have options for hiring a campervan (RV) from companies like: Maui, Kea, Britz and more.
Price Comparison Car Hire
Straight away I log in my dates and get the different costing of car hire for each company. Then I can add-on extras like:
- GPS,
- Insurance excess, and
- Baby seats and child restraints
Car Hire and Child Seat Restraints
But I am not familiar with the laws for child car seat restraints in other countries.
A visit to the dedicated DriveNow link for each country location: Australia, New Zealand, USA and UK, will enable me to read some Frequently Asked Questions which include an outline of that country’s child restraint laws.
UK – Frequently Asked Questions
New Zealand – Frequenly Asked Questions
Do you see the difference in requirements? Whilst here in Australia we must supply a booster seat until at least the age of 7, in the UK it is until the kids are 12, and in New Zealand they must use a restraint until they are 5 and there after if one is available use one.
But you say to me, “I have heard the seats are not always clean.” Look we hired a car when we went to Sydney with a toddler and hired a car seat with it. It was fine. However if you are worried, take a flannelette baby wrap and use it to line the car seat. Still worried? I have more options in my article Car Seat and Travelling – Help?
Road Rules in Foreign Countries
Now my only concern is the rest of the road rules?
Well, on each of the individual country’s webpage are some road rules and travel tips. It includes helpful tips like:
- Which side of the road to drive,
- Speed limits,
- Drink driving laws and
- Distances to kilometres and time to get to and from major destinations.
So now I am sorted with the car hire, I just have to decide where we are going 🙂
Have you hired a car?
Did you hire child restraints?
- DISCLOSURE: This post is sponsored by Drive Now. Aside from servicing Australia, they provide cheap rental cars in Christchurch, New Zealand. Click here to know more.
Linking Up With:
- Essentially Jess #IBOT
- Bumble Bee Mum #TravelTuesday
- My Brown Paper Packages #WednesdayWanderlust
- Justin plus Lauren #WeekendWanderlust
Thank you for linking up on Travel Tuesday. It’s interesting how different countries have different requirements where child seats are concerned. Personally, for me, it is not about the law. It is about safety. My children are young, so I always rent child seats for them, regardless of the law requirement in that country. I have never thought about the hygiene and cleanliness actually until you mention it. Safety has always been the only thing on my mind. And keeping the kids to their seats. When on a self-drive vacation, I would be driving while my husband is navigating (or vice versa), so nobody really tends to the kids while we are on the road. I cannot imagine them being without car seats!
Safety definitely comes first with your children, but I would never have thought that I would have to put my son in a booster seat up to the age of 12 like in the UK.
We hired a car while we were in Croatia recently. We went through one of the bigger car rental companies, and also pre booked a child seat for our youngest (Miss 7 did not need one). Well, we were disappointed to discover that they forgot to provide us with a child seat! And they did not have any at the pick up location. Fortunately, relatives that we were visiting had a spare seat that they no longer required. So my biggest tip would be to triple check with the rental company that child seats will be provided!
That’s so frustrating. Hotels can be just as bad with the rollaways. I always send reminder emails a week before we travel for the extras.
Great tips for renting cars! I think some of these recommendations are not taken into consideration when renting a car in a foreign country. I am not inclined to rent cars when I travel. However, I recognize I would like to rent a car in destinations I would like to revisit.
We don’t often rent cars either. So when we do we don’t know where to start, therefore a comparison website is a great starting point.
We usually get given a disposable cover to put over the car seat when we hire them, saves us worrying about germs and also we don’t have to worry about the mess we make too.
Thanks for joining in #wednesdaywanderlust again this week 🙂
I hadn’t heard about disposable covers – great initiative, which company offers those Malinda?
I honestly cannot recall the brand right now, which is pretty bad, I think it had a green logo so could have been Europcar. But I have also heard that you can buy your own disposable covers to take with you.
I’ll look into the disposable covers, thanks Malinda.
hi there Sally, thanks for the post – it’s very informative indeed! Some years back, in the Perth Airport with a reputable international car rental company, I requested for a car seat for my then 6-yo. He took one look at the kid and told me that given his height (he was about 1.25m then), he don’t need a car seat or even a boaster seat anymore. Half a year later, in Italy, another chap insisted that my kid (the same one), now about 1.28m, absolutely need one. That’s been my default, listen to the advise given by the ca rental fellows. It seems Drive Now gonna be a useful resource!
Best, Ling
The rules are all so confusing Ling, having somewhere to start like Drive Now is a real find.
Hi Sally,
That is a great website, and one I wish we had known about before we booked our car hire for our upcoming trip to Scotland. I will have to read over some of the country tips though before we go driving.
I wonder if anyone knows, but we have heard that when you hire car seats in the UK you have to install them yourselves? If so, I’m hoping they are pretty straight forward after a long-haul flight :).
I’ll have to let you know how it goes in a few weeks.
I hadn’t heard about that Matt – keep us updated.
These are great tips for renting a car with car seats. I have never used the Drive Now site, but we will have to check it on our next trip. Thanks. Found you on #WeekendWanderlust
I love finding new sites Allison to help organise my travel, I’m happy I’ve introduced a new one to you.
Some of the car hire seats were such a pain (and we waited forever to get them etc even though we’d pre-booked them). We wound up buying our twins’ travelling car seats and luggage made for them to go in the hold and carting them around with us. They were massive but we felt the kids were safer. Thank goodness those days are over! #weekendwanderlust
At the end of the day Shobba, it is about you feeling your children our safe (and of course abiding by the local laws at the same time). PS I’m glad we are past most of it now too.
It’s so handy that sites like this exist! It would be so hard to work out what was necessary otherwise.
Isn’t it Jess, somewhere to start you holiday research and find exactly what is what.
This sounds useful – hiring cars can be a bit of a minefield! Fortunately my husband likes driving, but we’ve had a few dodgy car seats. I’m looking forward to my daughter being old/tall enough for a booster. #mondayescapes
One of those cheap boosters are so much easier to carry around Cathy, and less chance of being damaged in the luggage hold.
Nice post and loving the flanalette tip. I’ve always had a dilemma about car seats…take your own in the hold and you know that it is good quality, clean and comfortable but you don’t know it will fit in the car you’ve hired, it’s a pain to carry and who knows how badly it has been bumped and dropped during transit? Hire a car seat and some places don’t guarantee they will have one – it’s a case of first come first served (though we’ve never yet been caught out), they may be a bit dirty/old and you also don’t know if they’ve been bumped etc. either! A website that at least tells you what the laws are though on seats is a handy start. It’s a minefield! #MondayEscapes
My alternate tip for hiring car seats is to use a baby hire company. Their products are almost always clean, safe and can be delivered to the car hire company or accommodation
Wow what an in-depth analysis! Thanks for sharing. Cars are always tricky part of travelling and this made it easier to plan hiring one! Bookmarked! #MondayEscapes
Glad to help you find an easier way to hire cars Merlinda
This is great thank you – we have a trip planned at the end of the Summer and we are just starting to look into hiring a car and seat thanks for sharing. #MondayEscapes
Perfect, don’t you love when things fall into place.
That’s a very helpful post!
I think I might have used a website like DriveNow when I was looking for a car hire in Dubai. I love this idea of comparing the companies, so you dont have to go in each of their websites!
Thank you for joining #MondayEscapes again 😀
I find travel comparison so useful when I’m planning my trips Allane, it’s great to have everything on the one page.
Not having kids, I never even thought about there being other rules in other countries for child seats and the like! Very informative article 🙂
Thanks Lauren, they also have the road rules for other countries which will come in handy for anyone.