Link to study where Britax convertables performed poorly Forward facing?

Title says it all.

I'm assuming you mean this:
http://www.tc.gc.ca/eng/roadsafety/...rograms-regulations-research-research-887.htm

The Britax seat that had issues was the Marathon; it is discussed (and videos are found) in the forward-facing seat section.

Might also want to read this to go along with it:
http://car-seat.org/showthread.php?t=100772

Did Britax ever have any response to this?

I don't believe they issued an official response, but they have responded to emails with assurance that the seats passed all the tests they need to, which is, of course, correct.

I posted some related comments on the tests in general here-

http://car-seat.org/showpost.php?p=1126697&postcount=24

CPSDarren said:

I posted some related comments on the tests in general here-

http://car-seat.org/showpost.php?p=1126697&postcount=24

Click to expand...

Oh thank you for posting this!
It is really such a hard decision.... luckily I have time to decide and get more information when the time comes to turn my son around.

Here is what Britax told me:
Thank you for choosing us Claudia. Please know that the test videos recently released by Transport Canada involving vehicle testing with installed car seats should not be used as a measure of the safety of your Britax car seat.

Be assured that your Britax car seat exceeds those Canadian Government safety standards established specifically for car seats and has a proven record of performance in real world crashes.

I have just had one other conv. car seat beforehand and my RA 50 is just amazing in comparison.......

Again Chickabiddy, I am strictly talking about the seat itself and not the crash testing!

I really don't know what they meant by how my seat exceeds the Canadian safety standards.... the RA 50 in particular..... or because of where it was made?! I have no clue.... all I know is that this seat has had a great install in my car, finally, and has been so easy to use which does give me a feeling of safety!

We know that not all car seats are created equal. Some have flimsy build construction. Some tend to install better than others in a wider range of vehicles. Some fit certain types of kids (e.g. preemies) better than others. Some have features that make them easier to use than others. Fabrics and comfort vary. Weight and height limits vary. You can get a good idea of all these issues from many of the techs and advocates here. Of course, everyone has their own preferences and biases, but hopefully you can get an idea of the more objective comparisons.

Car seats are not created equal in terms of crash performance, either. Unfortunately, techs and advocates have no way to assess this at all on their own. We also haven't been provided with any tests or studies that allow us to compare them reliably, like we have for vehicles (at least to some extent). Your model may perform better or worse than another in its class. We just don't have any way to judge this, and even a guess based on research or certifciation tests would have absolutely no proven correlation to real world risk of injury. Even if you made a table of all test results available from Europe, NHTSA, TC, Consumer Reports and anywhere else and created some type of aggregate average ranking, we still wouldn't know if the real world differences amount to any significant reduction in risk to your child.

We still don't have a lot of research data on rear-facing vs. forward-facing. We have a few studies, but none are real compelling with large sample sizes and real world correlations. Even things like EPS foam linings, side impact wings or top-tether vs. no top-tether are not well documented in terms of risk reduction. There's a lot of research to be done, and I suspect it could be a long time before we start to get real testing or statistics that show that some models have real crash protection benefits over others.