My son is super short, 4'9" and I have started to teach him to drive. He can only reach the pedals by putting the seat way too far forward (too close to the wheel). He will be getting my 2010 Honda Civic (I can't afford to get him a different car). He needs a booster, I figure a wedge type would be best, but I am concerned about how they stay secure. The car has leather seats.

Anyone with experience with this situation and what should I be looking for?

Might want to look at pedal extenders? I think that's what short-statured folks use.

A good friend is a dwarf, and uses pedal extenders as well as a disabled air bag for his Nissan Frontier.

The pedal extenders allow him to get a good view over the steering wheel, but he's still danger close to the airbag. Here was able to get an exemption with the DMV and disabled the airbag

I also remember him having a "suicide knob" on a steering wheel of an older car, but I haven't seen him use one of those in a while.

My wife used a pillow and a phone book. Haven't seen a phone book in years. Its why we didn't even test drive a Camaro, she couldn't reach the pedals. Foreign cars seem fine, they know the problem, domestic makers ignore shorty's. So they just by imports, and are happy.

I finally topped out at 5'3 , back in the 1970's. Not a lot of Japanese cars around at the time. Besides , they weren't "cool".

I never found any combo of pads very useful and they looked "dorky". I really didn't want to sit on a pillow. My buddies would tease the shit out of me. What worked well for me and later my wife ( 4'10) was to simply cut some 2x4 blocks of wood, the same size as the brake and gas pedals. Attach with hose clamps on top of the pedals. Go to a junkyard ( or internet ) and buy OEM rubber pads for the correct model of car and glue/screw on top of the wood blocks.

Once I was convinced that everything was solid.... I would then paint them in flat black. If you look , it's really so dark and out of the way where the pedals are that most folks never noticed. The only ones that would notice was if you let someone else drive the car. They would notice that they had to move the seat back more than they expected.

I never had a problem with this fix.

PS: I see a lot of pedal extenders on the internet. They look pretty good. In my experience , the Honda seats usually come forward about as well as any. Electric seats always work better than manual. More adjustability !

This message has been edited. Last edited by: mike28w,

My brother is disabled and he uses pedal extenders.

When he first started driving, my dad got him a pickup, dad made blocks of 2x4 and strapped them on with hose clamps.

Many seats slide in tracks that are bolted to the floor of the car (the nuts for the bolts are typically welded into the floor pan). With longer bolts -- using Grade 8 bolts only -- and a spacer of some sort -- washers or a piece of metal plate -- you can raise the seat an inch or more.

Similar thing works for fat folks. I had a buddy, Tanker, who went about 550#. He ate a lot. So I sold him my 1980 Jeep. He had a friend cut and weld the seat mounts back and down about 4". That along with the normal adjustment got his belly under the steering wheel.

Cool, thanks, I'll look into extenders, didn't even think of that.