Oh man. I'm in for a long... career

OK, so this time last year, I bought DD her MA (because she hated her SnugRide, because she couldn't see anything and you know). I wanted to make sure I was installing it correctly, so I went to Seat Check a couple miles away from my house. I'll give you a link to my huge b!tch about it, so I don't have to rewrite the whole long thing. Basically, the tech told me that the MA was too big for DD (who was 6 months and 17# at the time), and told me that I should return it and buy a Graco (yeah, that's right. You read correctly). This experience is what truely gave me that huge push to become a CPStech.

Fast forward to today. I go to my first seat check (not including the one attached to my class ). Guess who's there: yup, Mr "I hate Britax" (seriously!). We got into quite the heated discussion about seats (we had just installed a Regent - whoa! - and he said that he hated the Britax seats because "they claim to be easy to install but they're really terrible to install" yeah...) He also said that the SafeSeat was dumb, because no one is going to be able to tote around a 25+ pound kid in the carrier. It went on for about half an hour... Bad guys, really bad.

Worst part? He's an instructor. One of the "best" instructors. He was supposed to be one of the instructors at my class (THAT would be interesting).

ETA: I almost forgot the best(worst) part! He spouted the "study" that said that kids over 2 were safer in seatbelts alone than in CRS (because so many seats are installed incorrectly) It floored me. I cannot imagine a CPStech, let alone an INSTRUCTOR say that (it was in relation to the kiddo we had installed the Regent for - he was 23 months, 35#, and ALL TORSO - the mom had really done her reading, took him to BRU and tried him in all the seats, and the only one with slots high enough was the Regent - she said even the Apex65, he was "right at" the top slots - this kid was BIG - but in NO WAY ready for a seat belt alone - that doesn't even make sense!

OK, I'm not done ranting, and really rehashing the whole thing has only made me more upset. The thing is, he's at pretty much every check, so I'll have to get along with him and all, but MAN, I deal with enough from lay-people (lol).

Thank goodness you got certified then! The people in your town are way lucky to have you now-- guys like the one you described really give car seat safety a bad name. Everytime he gets on your nerves, just remember what a pickle people would be in without you. And if he keeps complaining about Britax, just have him funnel all the Britax users your way

i dont understand why people hate britax seats. we dont have one (yet) b/c when it came time to get a convertable all we could afford was the scenera. but the seem like the "safest" seats to me.
sorry he was such a PITB today and last year

Honestly that's the type of bad information that rates going over his head to the state and regional coordinators. Seriously.

skaterbabscpst said:

Honestly that's the type of bad information that rates going over his head to the state and regional coordinators. Seriously.

Click to expand...

I agree. Report him to SafeKids.

IME, people who complain that Britax seats are 'difficult to install' wouldn't be able to find their way out of a paper bag and have absolutely no idea what they're doing. :thumbsdown:

Especially considering your ETA, you should report him.

Wow, just wow, he is unbelievable.

I agree, I would report him. He sounds loony.

I found the link last weekish, can anyone else do it? Make it a paper airplane and throw it in his eyeball...

"Crash Data Confirms Child Safety Seats, Boosters Offer Survival Advantage to Child Passengers



Philadelphia --A new study has found that children who were using child restraints were 28 percent less likely to be killed in a crash than children who were wearing seat belts alone. Published today in The Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine, the research from the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia studied results for nearly 9,000 children aged two through six involved in serious motor vehicle crashes.



When cases of gross misuse of a child restraint were included in the crash analysis -- for example, if the restraint was not attached to the vehicle seat or the child was not wearing the harness, the overall reduction of risk declined to 21 percent.



"For every 100 children who were killed in a crash wearing only a seatbelt, 28 of them would have survived if they'd been in a car seat or booster seat," explained study author Dennis Durbin, M.D., M.S.C.E., a pediatric emergency medicine physician and co-scientific director at the Center for Injury Research and Prevention. "These findings build on many years of real-world and laboratory research which has consistently found child restraints to be very effective at preventing injuries."



Children's Hospital's injury research center is known for its ongoing research partnership with State Farm Mutual Insurance Company® called Partners for Child Passenger Safety (PCPS), which is the largest study of children in crashes. PCPS researchers have published numerous studies that demonstrated the effectiveness of various child restraint types at reducing nonfatal injury risk as compared with seat belts alone. They found that, for children under age eight, those who were appropriately restrained for their age and size could reduce their risk of serious injury in a crash to less than one percent.



"Until now, PCPS had not examined fatal crashes. Our research to date has focused primarily on preventing serious injury, because we felt this is where we could have the greatest effect," explains Dr. Durbin. "Now we can assure parents that, while rear seating and seat belts are better than no restraint at all, child restraints are significantly more effective at preventing both injuries and death for children less than seven years old." PCPS research has also confirmed that rear seating is the safest seating position for children younger than 13 years.



The new findings provide more up-to-date estimates of restraint effectiveness based on tow-away crashes that involved two- to six-year old children, occurring between 1998 and 2003. Thus, the data represents vehicles and child restraint designs in use by today's families. Previous analyses of child crash fatalities and restraint types involved crashes dating back to 1975.



"The data we had available to us in the past made it difficult to assess whether the improvements that reduced injury rates were also effective in reducing fatalities," explains co-author Flaura Winston, M.D., Ph.D., founder and co-scientific director of the Center for Injury Research and Prevention. "For this study, we combined data from fatal and non-fatal crashes to avoid potential biases we've identified in past analyses that looked only at fatal crashes."



Children's Hospital researchers combined cases from two national crash databases: the U.S. Department of Transportation's Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) - a database of all crashes in which at least one person died; with cases from the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS), which tracks police-reported crashes in which a vehicle was towed. This new method of analysis provides opportunities for the researchers to examine questions that can lead to improved safety practices and technology.



Vehicle seat belts are designed to protect an average adult-sized male. Improper positioning of both the lap and shoulder portions of seat belts place children at risk for ejection from the belt and from the vehicle, as well as for serious injuries to the head, neck, abdomen and spinal cord. Child restraints, such as child safety seats and belt-positioning booster seats are designed to keep children safe until they are old enough for the adult seat belt-- usually when they reach at least eight years old or four feet, nine inches tall.



Children's Hospital provides a multimedia website to address questions parents have about appropriate restraint and correct installation of child restraint systems. Parents can view brief videos, listen to helpful instructions and browse quick tips in English and Spanish at www.chop.edu/carseat."

Julie, I've said it before and I'll say it again - I love you! I'm emailing (and snail mailing) that study to him.

the thing is, he's pretty well-respected around here. The director (or whatever you call her - the person in charge of everyone ), really likes him a lot. I told her the story from last year (this was before the convo I had with him, and that stupid quote), to which she said something to the effect that he's a great person, that they get in a lot of disagreements, but he's still a good tech (to which I politely disagree - but didn't say that).

I listened to him with parents during the check, and I remember what turned me off so much when he checked my seat last year - he was really snide and condescending. He totally knows his rhetoric, and quotes the rules and stuff well, but I was really turned off by the way he was speaking to some expectant parents.

I'll email my director and ask her for his email (sort of so that she's in the loop a little as well).

I really don't want to step on too many toes, I mean, I'm a brand-new tech and everything, and this guy is really a 'higher up' - ya know?

That really stinks that such a "higher-up" tech is giving out horrible information

I think I would still complain anyway. He may be well respected but he's not giving out good info.

Report him.

I love that CHOP is in my city! They are one of the few things that give Philly a good name!

That guy should be reported, no doubt about it.

Amy