Strollerderby

In a withering expose published this week, the Chicago Tribune unearthed safety tests whose results raise questions about the dangers posed by several popular car seat models. The findings, which resulted from tests conducted by the National HIghway Traffic Safety Administration to determine the comparative safety ratings of cars, not the car seats inside them, were never released to the public, however, and in some cases were unknown even to the companies that make the car seats. Yet as the Tribune points out, such information would be of great interest to parents, who have to make choices about which car seat to buy based on nothing but the marketing mantras produced and promoted by the companies that make them.

Among the car seats performing poorly in the NHTSA tests -- videos of which can seen on the Tribune web site -- are the Graco SafeSeat, the Britax Companion, and the EvenFlo Discovery (which was recalled after the tests were completed). In nearly half of the seats tested, the bucket flew out of its base before or the seat's dummy occupant incurred damage which "exceded injury limits." In the videos of the tests, the seats can be seen flipping over backward to slam their infant dummies, face first, into the back of the car's front seat.

According to the Tribune article, this kind of result, seen repeatedly in the NHTSA tests conducted on actual cars, are seldom seen in the testing required of car seats, because those tests all feature a "sled bench," a mechanical stand-in for a car that lacks the physical features of a car's interior, such as front seats. All car seats sold in the US must pass muster in a 35 mph crash in the sled bench. The NHTSA tests unearthed by the Tribune simuulated a 30 mph head-on collision in a car.

Researchers and public safety advocates agree that car seats save lives, but also that manufactuters and government need to do a better job of testing their safety, and of informing the public about the results of those tests. It looks, at least for now, as if the latter part will take place. From the Tribune article: 

"What you've uncovered totally reveals the flaws in the current safety standard and also NHTSA's negligence in not reporting this to the public," said Joan Claybrook, a former NHTSA administrator and president emeritus of the advocacy group Public Citizen.

Responding to the Tribune investigation, newly installed Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a written statement Friday that he ordered a "complete top to bottom review of child safety seat regulations" and directed staff to make the crash-test results "more available" to consumers.

Although some manufacturers responded with plans to implement car crash testing to replace or augment the traditional sled tests, others continue to question the NTSB methodology. A spokesman for Graco agued that the testers must not have properly installed the carseat -- a frequent enough complaint, apparently, that the NTSB included owner's manual diagrams in its material to prove that even when properly installed, the SafeSeat flew off its base in some of their testing.

For parents who take their children's safety incredibly seriously -- which is to say, for all parents -- such information should not be blocked or evaded by manufacturers eager to defend the status quo, and their bottom line. Uniform, realistic, and stringent testing should be required, and the results published and distributed as widely as possible. The government should demand more from the manufacturers, and so should parents. 

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