Vic if you do end up taking her out of the booster she will still need to sit by the door as she has to be in a seatbelt that crosses her body. We have got Andrew a seatbelt adjuster so that it goes across his body in the right place.

This is copied from the second site link I posted above:

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In addition to the above figures, Sam Tormey states the following,

"The rear seat of the average family car is too deep for almost half of adult women to sit upright and comfortably bend their knees over the edge of the seat, and the seatbelt in the rear seat is unsafe for any person less than 145cm tall. Children do not reach this height until around 11 years old, on average. There are two main concerns with being too small for an adult belt: the lap portion rides across the tummy, not the bony hips, causing abdominal injury in a crash, and the sash portion rides across the neck rather than the chest, causing injury to the neck and throat. Long seat cushions exacerbate these concerns by causing the child or small adult to slump so that their knees can bend at the edge of the seat, causing both parts of the seatbelt to ‘ride up’." Sam Tormey is a doctor who writes on medical issues. His practice is in emergency medicine. Sydney's Child August 2008, pg 32.

It is recommended that your child remains in a harnessed restraint right up to 18kgs, then use a full backed booster once they have outgrown their car seat. 

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If I was 7 cms shorter I'd need a booster seat

Hi Vic

I hope this factsheet from LTSA helps http://www.landtransport.govt.nz/factsheets/07.html.  Basically the recommendation is that children should be in a child restraint (capsule/carseat/booster) until 7 yrs old.

ETA: I just found this site too http://www.childrestraints.co.nz/law.htm#nz

Maya wrote: The only issue I'd have if I had three across one row is that they'd fight, the gremlins bite and hit each other as it is and that's with a whole seat space between them!

Thats coz the checky things get their arms out of their belts (so I descovered when I took them out last week), I had to stop a number of times.

Andrew has already driven without a booster (well not driven the car ) so I know he will be fine when the time comes. If we have another and it is next year then we will put Josh in the booster and Andrew without and the new baby in the capsule then carseat.