Vent Challenging the No Aftermarket Carseat Cover conventional wisdom

Aftermarket car seat covers are demonized here, but frankly i would like to push back a bit and challenge this stance.
im all for keeping my kid very safe, but some of the rules seem arbitrary and written by lawyers not engineers

How come it's apparently sooo dangerous to have the fabric of a cover there, but not my kids t shirt and pants and such, his pants aren't flame resistant and his shirt is clearly capable of shifting under force. heck his diaper compresses way more than a seat cover would!

Now again I clearly understand the importance of not hindering the harness or adding extra padding and I would never in a million years buy one of these generic covers off etsy, but I am a excellent seamstress and could make a seat cover patterned exactly after the manufactures version. again I think the only person who really could have the issue is the layer who wants to cover his ass.

In the end I have twin toddlers which are showing the signs of being carsick kids like I was, I have had to remove, take apart, wash, put back together and reinstall my car seats abut 8 times this summer. I'm sick of it and my kids are at times being made to ride home in a seat covered in puke, that is sad, cruel and unacceptable.

so someone tell me a really good reason why I shouldn't make a thin, single layer, non slip liner for my seats that I can take off whenever I need to, in route if the issue arises?

for the extra bit of venting I also want to understand is how are the strap covers that came with my seat apparently safe and the ones that I make that are exactly the same size and shape, not safe?
I get how extra long fluffy ones can be bad, but this just seems like a case of common sense here.

When we are dealing with possibility of vomit in the car, I like to drape a thick towel over my kids. The towel not only prevents the cover from getting dirty, but also the harness, which is important to me because I think the harness is a bigger pain to clean than the cover, since at least most covers can go into the washing machine with detergent. The towel also keeps my kids' clothes clean. I guess I just consider a towel a win-win type thing. No worry about aftermarket covers, and it provides more protection than an aftermarket cover would anyway, because it also protects the harness and the kiddo's clothing. Also, it's a lot easier to deal with a towel that's been on top of a kid than to uninstall and take apart a seat to get a cover off, aftermarket or otherwise.

We hadn't had any car sickness episodes or ill-timed stomach bugs in some time, but then a few weeks ago it happened when I didn't have a towel in the car, and just that 1 episode was a huge pain to deal with. I'm sorry you have to clean the seats so frequently, so I hope maybe my solution might work for you, too.

If its truly something thin (no thicker than a layer of clothing) and truly doesn't interfere with the harness settings, I actually wouldn't have much problem with it. It does become a slippery slope, because someone sees it, thinks it's fine, and goes and buys some awful bulky, non-aligned thing. Most people are not seamstresses, and most people don't understand issues like compression and not interfering with the harness.

It's not the kind of thing I'd encourage anyone to do, but it's not the kind of thing I'd fight tooth-and-nail to prevent either.

I'm likely in the minority on that, though.

Nice idea and I have once managed to get a towel in place while I rushed my son home and he really let loose. But for that to really be our fix I would need to convince two 20m active toddlers to leave a towel over them, the humidity of the eastcoast, I don't see it ever happening, it worked that one day cause he was sadly too sick feeling to even make eye contact let alone put up a fight. I have been thinking of making some bibs for the Carseats, something that can't easily move but that doesn't smother them too much.

The thing is too that you may be willing to take an "informed" risk (which we can't really know for sure on still- some of Graco's seats require harness covers, just regular plain harness covers, be removed at 40 lbs., because they apparently impact the performance of the seat! So we know materials used can have an impact on performance...) but most people really don't think anything of it but "ooooh, pretty!" They have no idea of the risks. If we tell them it's not approved, could be dangerous, is illegal in some states, and they still choose to do it... that's their choice. But they do need to be informed fully first.

could you make some sort of poncho for the kids? something light weight for summer of course... that would help protect the seat and straps from vomit?

another option would be to order an extra set of seat covers for times the others are in the wash.

I love the poncho idea. You can also sell it as a superhero cape that you have to put on backwards in the carseat so everyone can see it!