New 10 year old NHTSA Crash Dummy

CrunchyMaineMama · Feb 21, 2012

Just got this in my email:

NHTSA 03-12
Tuesday, February 21, 2012

NHTSA Unveils New ‘10-Year-Old Child’ Crash Test Dummy

Test dummy will evaluate growing number of child seats and boosters designed for children weighing more than 65 pounds

WASHINGTON – The nation’s automotive safety agency is unveiling a new crash test dummy today that will be used to evaluate the growing number of child safety seats and boosters made for children weighing more than 65 pounds. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) “10-year-old child” dummy is the latest addition to the agency’s family of test dummies and is the best tool currently available for measuring the risk of injury to a child using a higher-weight child restraint system in the event of a vehicle crash.

“It’s good news that manufacturers are making more car seats and boosters than ever before designed to keep older and heavier children safer on our roadways,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “As the marketplace evolves to accommodate changing consumer needs, it’s important that safety regulators also have the best tools possible for evaluating how well these products work. The new test dummy breaks new ground for the Department’s crash test program and is a significant step forward for evaluating child seat performance.”

The 10-year-old child test dummy was developed in concert with new safety seat requirements updated to keep pace with the latest scientific research and child restraint system technologies. It will provide never-before-available information capturing the risk of injuries using head and knee excursions, as well as chest acceleration. The final rule issued by NHTSA today amends the current federal child safety seat standard to include car seats and boosters specified for children weighing more than 65 pounds and up to 80 pounds. The expanded standard will evaluate how well the higher-weight restraint systems manage crash energy and if the seat’s structure stays intact by incorporating the use of the dummy for the first time ever in compliance tests. Manufacturers will have two years to certify their higher-weight car seats and boosters to meet the new requirements.

“Our new dummy is an excellent addition to NHTSA’s extensive child seat compliance testing program and will enable the agency to gather the best data yet on the performance of higher-weight child seats,” said David Strickland, NHTSA Administrator. “Even as we begin to reap the benefits of this new tool, NHTSA is already looking down the road and has research under way to further improve the dummy.”

Today’s announcement follows more stringent child safety seat recommendations issued by NHTSA last year encouraging parents and caregivers to keep children in a car seat with a harness for as long as possible, up to the height and weight specifications of the seat. The agency’s updated child seat guidance also recommends that children ride in a booster seat until they are big enough to fit in a seat belt properly, which is typically when the child is somewhere between 8-12 years old and about 4 feet 9 inches tall..

Baylor · Feb 21, 2012

Awesome!!

auto correct hates me

carseatcoach · Feb 21, 2012

Curious about the height/weight of the dummy...

130cm and 35.4kg (http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/rulemaking/pdf/HIII-10C_Part572-FinalRule_022112_v1.pdf)

Seems a bit small for a 10yo, but still, very neat and long overdue!

Laurelz · Feb 22, 2012

Def be interested in seeing results!

tarynsmum · Feb 22, 2012

carseatcoach said:
Curious about the height/weight of the dummy...

130cm and 35.4kg (http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/rulemaking/pdf/HIII-10C_Part572-FinalRule_022112_v1.pdf)

Seems a bit small for a 10yo, but still, very neat and long overdue!

Going off CDC charts, for a girl that's 63rd percentile for weight and 9th percentile for height. For a boy it's 70th percentile for weight and 7th for height. So... disproportionate, to be sure.

Pixels · Feb 22, 2012

We have needed this for so long. Currently, any seat (harness or booster) with a weight limit over 50 pounds has no injury testing. Meaning, they put the dummy in the carseat and check to make sure the carseat doesn't break in half, but there are no head excursion limits, no knee excursion limits, no chest Gs, no head injury criterion. That's the best they have been able to do for now, because they didn't have a dummy that would give reliable data to test the seats with.

How soon will we see manufacturers making claims that their seats pass with the new dummy?

carseatcoach · Feb 22, 2012

tarynsmum said:
Going off CDC charts, for a girl that's 63rd percentile for weight and 9th percentile for height. For a boy it's 70th percentile for weight and 7th for height. So... disproportionate, to be sure.

Oh, you are right! I was just looking at the height since that's how seats are typically outgrown (I realize this is not a fitment dummy; it's just where my mind went) and didn't realize the disproportion.

christineka · Feb 22, 2012

carseatcoach said:
Curious about the height/weight of the dummy...

130cm and 35.4kg (http://www.nhtsa.gov/staticfiles/rulemaking/pdf/HIII-10C_Part572-FinalRule_022112_v1.pdf)

Seems a bit small for a 10yo, but still, very neat and long overdue!

I don't feel like looking up the inches conversion, but my 10 year old dd is 65 pounds. My older dd was also near that weight at 10. My 10 year old is 4' 8". My older dd was 52 inches tall at 10.

LISmama810 · Feb 22, 2012

Pixels said:
How soon will we see manufacturers making claims that their seats pass with the new dummy?

I'm almost positive that I saw such a thing already.

ETA: Yes, I did.

StillThankful · Feb 22, 2012

Pixels said:
Currently, any seat (harness or booster) with a weight limit over 50 pounds has no injury testing. Meaning, they put the dummy in the carseat and check to make sure the carseat doesn't break in half, but there are no head excursion limits, no knee excursion limits, no chest Gs, no head injury criterion. That's the best they have been able to do for now, because they didn't have a dummy that would give reliable data to test the seats with.

Pixels, I had "heard" of this before but thanks for explaining it as you did. I really had no idea they were just crash testing for car seat durability and not child injury for 50# + harnessed seats.

However, the 10 y/o will weigh OVER 65 pounds so isn't there still a window of need for dummy injury results in seats that hold UP TO 65#? Will dummy injuries now be measured for the 65# seat?

Pixels · Feb 22, 2012

StillThankful said:
Pixels, I had "heard" of this before but thanks for explaining it as you did. I really had no idea they were just crash testing for car seat durability and not child injury for 50# + harnessed seats.

However, the 10 y/o will weigh OVER 65 pounds so isn't there still a window of need for dummy injury results in seats that hold UP TO 65#? Will dummy injuries now be measured for the 65# seat?

The current 6yo dummy normally weighs 53 pounds. That dummy is used to test any seat with a weight limit over 40 pounds or a height limit over 43.3 inches. Whether a seat has a 42 pound limit or a 120 pound limit, it would have to be tested with the 53 pound 6yo dummy. This dummy does give us injury measures.

For seats with a weight limit over 50 pounds or a height limit over 43.3 inches, they are also tested with the 6yo dummy with extra weights added to the spine to make it weigh 62 pounds. The weighted 6yo dummy does not move the way a real child would at that weight, so they can't use the injury numbers. So for this test, they just look at whether or not the seat breaks. Better than nothing. This was an interim measure while they worked on developing this new 10yo dummy.

The new 10 yo dummy will weigh 78 pounds. There was an old 10yo dummy, but it was so bad (in terms of moving and responding similarly to a real child) that they couldn't use it at all. This new one should take care of that problem.

Yes, there is a jump between the 53 pound 6yo dummy and the 78 pound 10yo dummy. They can't make dummies at every size. Right now there is only the uninstrumented newborn dummy, a 12mo, a 3yo (33 pounds), and the two versions of the 6 year old.

rxmommy · Feb 22, 2012

christineka said:
I don't feel like looking up the inches conversion, but my 10 year old dd is 65 pounds. My older dd was also near that weight at 10. My 10 year old is 4' 8". My older dd was 52 inches tall at 10.

130 cm = 51.2" or 4'3"

35.4kg= 78lbs

hope I did that right

yeah, I'm glad someone looked at the growth charts, because that does seem very short for a 10-year-old. My 7.5-year-old is taller than that. And she will be nowhere near weighing 78lbs in 2 years, though.

StillThankful · Feb 22, 2012

Pixels said:
The current 6yo dummy normally weighs 53 pounds. That dummy is used to test any seat with a weight limit over 40 pounds or a height limit over 43.3 inches. Whether a seat has a 42 pound limit or a 120 pound limit, it would have to be tested with the 53 pound 6yo dummy. This dummy does give us injury measures.

For seats with a weight limit over 50 pounds or a height limit over 43.3 inches, they are also tested with the 6yo dummy with extra weights added to the spine to make it weigh 62 pounds. The weighted 6yo dummy does not move the way a real child would at that weight, so they can't use the injury numbers. So for this test, they just look at whether or not the seat breaks. Better than nothing. This was an interim measure while they worked on developing this new 10yo dummy.

The new 10 yo dummy will weigh 78 pounds. There was an old 10yo dummy, but it was so bad (in terms of moving and responding similarly to a real child) that they couldn't use it at all. This new one should take care of that problem.

Yes, there is a jump between the 53 pound 6yo dummy and the 78 pound 10yo dummy. They can't make dummies at every size. Right now there is only the uninstrumented newborn dummy, a 12mo, a 3yo (33 pounds), and the two versions of the 6 year old.

Thanks for the clarification.

I am looking forward to the intro of a dummy that fills the gap one day. There is a need for a 65# dummy since most convertible seats boast 65# limits.

Pixels · Feb 22, 2012

I'm reading the actual Notice of Rulemaking now, and it has some interesting tidbits. It looks like this "new" dummy isn't new at all, and has been around since at least 2005. It is the same 10yo dummy that exhibited hard chin-to-chest contacts and was therefore unreliable back then. Those chin-to-chest contacts caused a large variability in the HIC (head injury criterion) when the same test was run repeatedly, because sometimes the chin would impact the chest and sometimes it wouldn't.

What they have done to deal with the problem is to exclude the 10yo from HIC. All other injury measures apply.

The new standard (testing with the 10yo dummy) will apply to child restraints with a weight limit over 65 pounds. Britax asked that the cutoff be 70 pounds so that their convertibles would not have to be tested with the 10yo dummy.

This new rule also covers LATCH weight limits on restraints. Proposed was a 65 pound child weight limit. SKJP asked that the CRS manufacturer be allowed to determine the weight limit if the manufacturer could prove that the child restraint with the largest allowable dummy will not overload the lower anchors. Some commenters said that the maximum weight limit should be combined child and restraint weight. Some commenters said that the weight limit should apply to lower anchors only and not tethers. Some commenters said that there should be an exemption to the weight limit for use in booster mode.

Summy of the rule changes:

FMVSS 213 will cover child restraints for children up to 80 pounds (previously 65 pounds).
The 10yo dummy will be used with head excursion (tethered and untethered), knee excursion, and chest acceleration limits. HIC will not be used.
A head and neck positioning procedure is added for the 10yo and 6yo dummies.
Child restraints rated for 50 to 65 pounds are tested for performance with the 6yo dummy and for integrity with the weighted 6yo dummy. (No change to current rules)
Child restraints rated for 65 to 80 pounds or more than 49.2 inches are tested with the 10yo dummy.
CRs will have to be labeled so that lower anchors cannot be used with a combined child+restraint higher than 65 pounds when the child is using the internal harness. During compliance testing, NHTSA will not test seats using lower anchors when the dummy exceeds the manufacturer's stated lower anchor limit. *This means that ALL child restraints will have a maximum lower anchor limit of 65 pounds combined child and restraint weight. Some restraints could place a lower limit, but nothing higher.*

All CRSs tested thus far by NHTSA with the 10yo dummy have passed the new performance standard. There will be some required labeling changes, mostly pertaining to the lower anchor limit.

The 10yo dummy has a seated height of 29 inches. This is supposed to be average for a 10yo.

LISmama810 · Feb 22, 2012

So this renders SuperLATCH largely useless, and gives the foonf a LATCH limit of 34 lbs? (I imagine similar for other heavy seats: Frontier, e.g.)

I assume these LATCH weight limits won't be retroactive? When do they go into effect?

LISmama810 · Feb 22, 2012

Oh, I should add: Holy schnitzel.

Pixels · Feb 22, 2012

All of the new standards (10yo dummy, lower anchor limits) go into effect two years from the date of publication in the Federal Register. It was submitted to the Federal Register today, so it will be published soon. I think it's a weekly publication or so.

Short answer: the new standards go into effect approximately two years from today.

LISmama810 · Feb 22, 2012

So it'll be another two years before we have a consistent LATCH limit?

babyherder · Feb 22, 2012

at the dummy and testing info! I'm suddenly not feeling like harnessing any kids over 50ish lbs. I know its been safe in real life situations and I'm not saying anyone who chooses to do this is wrong but the info in this thread is making me cringe. As for the latch limits its hard enough to get parents to use seats correctly and now they need to know how much their seats weigh????

New 10 year old NHTSA Crash Dummy

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