We are big fans of front mounted bike seats. They position the child in front of you, allowing them to see ahead and anticipate what's coming ahead. Further, the weight is distributed equally over the bike which offers a very stable ride, even at slow speeds. A limitation of front mounted and defiantly rear mounted seats has always been their lack of off road capabilities. The molded plastic seats are rigid, offering little dampening of vibration when it comes to dirt trails and undulating terrain. Lastly, mounting front mounted seats to some full suspension mountain bikes can prove challenging or even impossible...until now.
Three seats have caught our eye that have turned riding single track and mountain bike specific trails with the wee ones into a reality! We have tried all three of the seats and can say a lot of fun can be had on this style of seat. All of them share the principle of placing the child in front of you, allowing them to balance and anticipate terrain ahead. Leg stirrups or foot pegs allow the child to stand-up and absorb bumps and roots making for a very interactive ride. Safety straps are not integrated. The thought is you want to get yourself and child way from the bike in the event of an accident. This makes intuitive sense to mountain bikers as they will always say its best to get as far away from the bike as possible if you were to come off. Personally, I don't even strap my kids into our traditional ibert front mounted seat for this reason. Of note, there currently are no safety standards for front mounted seats. The biggest risk with theses seats in our opinion is a foot being jammed in the front wheel or being wedged in between fork crown and tire.
| Ages | Promoted for off road | Max Weight | Setup | Price | |
| MAC RIDE | 2-6 | Yes | 60 lbs | Easy on/off (spacer stays on bike) | 229 USD |
| DO Little | 2-7 | Yes | 61 lbs | Mid-mount to downtube | 139 USD |
| Shotgun Seat | 2-5 | Yes | 48 lbs | Easy on/off (once fitted to bike) | 150 USD |
MAC RIDE
This seat has it all. A well thought out design allowing for easy on/off once a headset spacer is mounted, this seat will also accommodate a dropper posts on a mountain bike. I am a contributor to the original kickstarter campaign and being a year behind schedule, I was stoked when it arrived. The 2.0 version is even better!
Do Little
This sturdy seat from New Zealand is fantastic. Although you give up the stirrup adjustments and easy on/off of the mac ride... you do get a robust and comfortable seat with good weight distribution due to the frame mount (lighter steering than a headset mounted seat). The child also sits lower with slopey down tubes which we like. Although the manufacturer states it's ok for carbon frames, we would go with the Mac Ride if you have a carbon wonderbike.
Shotgun Seat
Another great little seat from New Zealand with nice weight distribution. A 30 sec on/off once fitted to your bike, the seat offers a nice mount to MTB frames. The manufacturer does state it is carbon frame compatible. The seat comes with integrated foot straps which we love as it prevents kiddos foot from jamming between fork crown and tire. You can also purchase a riser bar attachment for the kiddos
As I already mentioned, there is a crash concern with a front-mounted seat. In the event of an endo (basically where you do a somersault over your bars), there’s a good chance your child is going to get hurt. Of course, there is always a crash concern any time you are cycling with (or without) a child, but the front-mounted seat does expose the child more than a trailer, for example.
Rule number one, don’t crash. You need to be a confident cyclist to ride with and child seat, rear or front. We would argue the crash concern is similar for rear and front seats. Trailers the way to go for novice cyclist.
Personally, we’ve ridden on a near-daily basis for three years with different front-mounted bike seats and our son has never gotten so much as a scratch in a bike crash. (We have had a non-crash accident on our Tyke Toter).
Have you looked at and tried the Do Little kids bike seat yet?
Hi Frank, yes we have. Unfortunately our little tester broke his arm going down the stairs two days after we received it. We are hoping to get back on it soon. The two days we had on it were great, a solid little seat.
[…] was having production delays. We outlined these new front mounted style of seats in a previous post but we had not yet tried any of them…until […]