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January 05, 2007

CU meets with NHTSA to improve infant-seat safety

Our report on infant safety seats garnered immediate national attention. That's not surprising considering the findings: Most rear-facing infant car seats failed our crash tests — and disastrously so. Particularly disturbing is the image of a baby-sized test dummy hurtling through the air.

Before we made our findings public, we met with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the government agency that regulates vehicles and child safety seats — primarily to give officials the heads-up on what was sure to be a closely watched report on the deficiencies of infant seats uncovered in our recent test program. We also wanted to visit NHTSA ahead of time to ensure that the public would be best served by this new safety information and that consumers would receive consistent messages from two sources they often turn to for guidance.

At the meeting, we asked NHTSA to take the following actions:

  1. Recall the Evenflo Discovery infant seat, which our test shows does not comply with government standards for crash protection. We provided test data demonstrating noncompliance of the Discovery with NHTSA's own standard for safety seats. Evenflo is disputing our findings.
  2. Recall the Eddie Bauer Comfort infant seat, which our certified Child Passenger Safety experts were unable to install securely in any of the five vehicles they tried. The manufacturer, Dorel Juvenile Group, acknowledges fit problems with the base of the seat and offers an improved, updated base to those consumers who know to complain. We think all owners of the Comfort should be notified of the improved base and offered a replacement through an effective recall campaign. 
  3. Reevaluate the way NHTSA develops its ease-of-use ratings for safety seats. We pointed out the inconsistency between our fit-to-vehicle test results for the Eddie Bauer Comfort and their ease-of-use ratings for this model, which they rated an "A." We suggested that the agency use real cars, as Consumer Reports does, to get an accurate assessment of fit and ease-of-use. 
  4. Conduct a consumer information program that rates the crash protection provided by child-safety seats in the same way the agency does for passenger vehicles with its five-star crash-test ratings. The ratings of child safety seats should be based on dynamic sled tests matching the crash-test conditions used to rate new cars, with a frontal impact of 35 mph and a side impact of 38 mph. Current test dummies and crash-test sled designs could easily be adapted to measure the rigidity and structural integrity of safety seats.
  5. Make improvements to LATCH (Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children), the universal attachments system that improves the likelihood of getting a secure fit between the vehicle's seat and the safety seat. NHTSA should not only study LATCH anchor accessibility in vehicles but should also determine why seats attached by LATCH are more likely to fail in CR' s crash tests. We also asked that the agency require safety seats to be secured not only at the rear but also at the front by securing the front of the seat to an anchor at the vehicle's floorboard. That would significantly reduce rebound after a frontal crash, backward motion in a rear crash, and lateral motion in a side crash.

We look forward to a continued dialogue and hope to see improvements in NHTSA's regulations soon.