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Saturday, January 06, 2007
Consumer Reports is a service we trust for a lot of things. Food, no. (One recent issue revealed that Consumer Reports' food testers cannot tell the difference between wine that has been opened and allowed to breathe and wine that has been left sitting out overnight. Yikes!) But car seats? When CR has something to say, we listen up.
Here's what they have to say after conducting their own crash tests with a variety of American-made infant car seats:
Cars and car seats can't be sold unless they can withstand a 30-mph frontal crash. But most cars are also tested in a 35-mph frontal crash and in a 38-mph side crash. Car seats aren't.
When we crash-tested infant car seats at the higher speeds vehicles routinely withstand, most failed disastrously. The car seats twisted violently or flew off their bases, in one case hurling a test dummy 30 feet across the lab.
Of twelve models they tested, all but two failed one or more tests, CR reports. Think they're talking about car seats and cars that don't use the LATCH (Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children) system? Wait, it gets worse.
No car seat can provide good protection if it's not installed right, something that the LATCH system was devised to address. A tight fit is important for crash protection, and our testers find that you are more likely to get a secure fit with LATCH than with vehicle safety belts. Nevertheless, the car-seat tests underscore continuing problems. For example, more seats failed when attached with LATCH than with safety belts, even when the installation was done by professionals. The same has been true in our previous car-seat tests.
THE BIG NEWS
LATCH systems have only been required in cars since 2002, and they are still being improperly installed by a lot of parents. But the NHSTA has said for years that the single highest risk factor for children in car seats was parental installation of the car seat, estimating that 82% of car seats are improperly installed. Some studies suggest that this figure is even higher for rear-facing infant car seats - as high as 92% .
CR says it tested the car seats in conditions "similar to that of a Ford Explorer." Like other SUVs, the Explorer really lacks is the rear LATCH anchor, which allows a strap to be connected from the back of the car seat over the seat back and to the floor, thus providing significant increased strength.
The most important finding of the CR study, if their data is valid, is that even professional installation of infant car seats using the LATCH system is less effective than the seatbelt method when not using a rear tether . The organization reports that they also found this to be true of convertible car seats in previous tests.
You can get all the gory details here . But first, a couple of caveats.
LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
Consumer Reports confined their tests to "infant" car seats, which last 6-12 months and detach from a base. If you use a convertible car seat in a rear-facing position, your infant is much safer.
The rear seat position used in the Consumer Reports tests is not specified. Remember the LATCH warning above? CR had a curious complaint to make about LATCH accessibility:
Another problem with LATCH is that anchors in many cars are hard to access. And most vehicles don't have LATCH anchors in the safest seat in the car: the center rear. It can also be hard to adjust safety belts to a car seat located in the center rear.
Most cars come with four LATCH anchors, positioned for use in either of the side seats, and it was unclear at this post's publication which car manufacturers recommend the use of the innermost LATCH on each side to be used for center anchoring. We checked with Toyota , the manufacturer of the Corolla Matrix, who surprised us by saying that the inner anchors should not be used in this way, but only for anchoring in the side seat positions. We have been doing this for two and a half years!
Ford's customer service is only open from Monday through Friday (kudos to Toyota for staying open on weekends!) but a salesperson at our local Ford dealership said that the LATCH anchors in Ford Explorers were positioned to allow for center-seat use. CR does not specify whether they gave preference to using the LATCH in the side seats or using the center seatbelt for their tests.
Consumer Reports uses unclear statistics to describe the seriousness of the problem. The publication's own distillation of the issue takes a tremendous logical leap. See if you can spot the Grand Canyon they hopped over in this paragraph:
All states and the District of Columbia require infants to be secured in car seats when traveling in passenger vehicles. Still, 572 infants under 1 year old were killed in traffic accidents from 2001 to 2005, with side crashes accounting for 151 of those deaths, or 26 percent, NHTSA data show.
Reported car seat utilization rates are reported at between 80-90% by most states in data falling within this period. But NHTSA data not cited by CR 's study shows that only 46% of infants used rear-facing seats, and that 48% used forward-facing car seats, which everyone agrees is highly unsafe. There is no data available regarding how many infants were in infant car seats and how many were in convertible car seats, which do not detach from a base. Considering the percentage of families who have their infants facing the wrong direction, the greatest number of fatalities we'd be able to lay at the feet of the restraint system would be about half of what CR cites - that is, about 275 infant fatalities over the five-year span, or 55 per year. Of course, the number we all want to see is zero. But when discussing the significance of a safety issue, it is important to use the best data available and clearly outline what it cannot tell us.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Forego the infant car seat. This is the easiest and best (and most cost-efficient) solution for parents concerned about the Consumer Reports study and the failure rate of infant car seats. For information on ways you can transport your sleeping infant when out of the car, see our recommendations for slings and baby carriers .
Have your car seat professionally installed. Your local police, fire department, or other service organization offers this service for free. They will not only install it for you, they will teach you how to install your car seat. Call your local police or fire department to find out who provides this service in your area.
Check your car seat for product recalls. Here's where to go.
Support mandatory parent education on car seat installation. Call your Congressional representatives and ask them to support legislation requiring parents to receive certification that they have learned how to properly install their car seat. Such certification could be linked to individual car seat models and could be required at vehicle stops when children are on board who required to be in car seats.
Support further NHTSA studies into the effectiveness of LATCH systems. Are floor anchors less effective than a seatbelt even when rear tethers are used? Is the use of a seatbelt in the center seat more or less effective than the use of lower LATCH anchors with or without the rear tether in the side seats? Further NHTSA research or reports for the public are warranted to clear up these issues.
