Consumer Reports Says Your Infant Car Seat Is Crap
Consumer Reports recently tested 12 infant car seats
and declared that most “failed disastrously.” In fact, they could only
recommend two (I’ll wait while you get a pen and paper to write this
down): the Graco Snugride with E-P-S and the Baby Trend Flex Lock, both
retail for under $100.
That’s right, the hundreds of bones you just spent on a fancy Peg Perego, Maxi-Cosi, or Britax were a big waste of money. Eeeeh, not really, according to Estelle and Jean of Faggots on the Third Floor:
Your seat is fine. Don’t worry. Consumer Reports is full of shit,
as always. Trust me, know one who knows car seats puts a lick of faith
in anything CR ever says about car seats. The onslaught will begin all
over the internet tonight. Stores will sell out of the seats they
recommended. People will be scared that their child is destined to die
in a crash because CR said their seat failed. As one tech so politely
put it, “roll up the magazine and use it to start a fire.”
As is to be expected, Britax responded
by saying that they’d need to see details of the testing methods and
results in order to address the article. Yadda x 3. They’re using the
classic “Deflection Defense” which I supposed I’d do too, if I were the
de facto standard for safe carseats.
Whatever you think about the report, infant car seats are often
installed incorrectly and babies are placed in them improperly. I
highly recommend you contact your local highway patrol, police
department, or fire station to get your seat inspected. Information is
available here.
In light of this earlier post about how much your infant’s car seat probably sucks, this article about
Umm, so why should we be trusting Estelle and Jean who cannot apparently differentiate between “no” and “know” over Consumer Reports?
In any case, I would question whether owners of a Maxi-Cosi should take concern since the EU has stricter testing standards, especially for side-impact and Maxi-Cosi carriers were not tested.
It is difficult to know who to trust. Fortunately, the carseat that was purchased for my grandchild makes the cut for being one of the good ones.
While watching this piece I thought about the days when I was a child, riding in the back window, on that ledge in my dad’s Buick with both the windows down as comfortable as can be. We rarely wore seatbelts as children, there weren’t any laws that said we had to.
I wonder how many deaths there were back then?
Just sixteen years ago, when my oldest son was a baby, the seats were much different than they are now. There were no five point harnesses, I don’t think those came around until about ten years ago.
I guess that while I did rush to the box to see if the grandchild’s new seat was one of those recommended, and even considered what I was going to do if it wasn’t, I am happy knowing that children riding in cars are much safer now than they were many years ago.
Just my thoughts…
An interesting study shows child seats decrease mortality for kids in car crashes by about 30%.
But:
So a properly installed kid seat buys you about 1/3 more protection than a crappily-installed one, but neither decrease mortality as much as one would think given the enormous hype that articles like this CR one produce.
Damn. I love my Britax.
I hate that there’s no way to know who to trust here.