On February 27, 2012, the agency issued final rules to incorporate the Hybrid III 10-year old dummy into the federal motor vehicle safety standards to evaluate the growing number of child safety seats and boosters made for children weighing 65 pounds or greater. The 10-year-old dummy is the latest addition to the family of crash test dummies and is the best tool available to evaluate how well the higher-weight restraint systems manage crash energy.
• On July 6, 2012, President Obama sighed the “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act” (MAP-21), P.L. 12-141, in which Subtitle E, “Child Safety Standards,” directs the Secretary to consider various rulemaking actions to enhance child safety including improving side impact protection for children in child restraints, improving the ease of use of child restraint anchorage systems, and amending the bench seat in the standard to better simulate a single representative motor vehicle rear seat. These child safety action items in MAP-21 were already in progress according to NHTSA’s Vehicle Safety and Fuel Economy Rulemaking and Research Priority Plan 2011-2013.
• The agency is developing proposals to incorporate a side impact test procedure, performance requirements, and a new 3-year-old side impact child dummy, “Q3s” into Standard No. 213 to evaluate side impact protection of child restraint systems. This test would be the first of its kind in the world to evaluate child restraints in a sled system that simulates the vehicle acceleration and the intruding door of a small passenger car in a side impact (a vehicle-to-vehicle intersection crash). These proposals are expected to be issued in 2013.
• Recent surveys of child restraint system installations indicate that only 60 to 70 percent of installations use the available child restraint anchorage system and that misuse and installation errors persist in spite of consumer education efforts. Therefore, the agency is developing a proposal to
improve the ease of use and the usability of child restraint anchorage systems to facilitate increased use of child restraint anchorages and correct child seat installation. This proposal would also respond to MAP-21 mandates.
• Regarding upgrades to the standard bench seat in MAP-21, the agency already has an ongoing effort examining how well the test parameters of the FMVSS No. 213 sled test replicate the real world, including crash pulse, test velocity, excursion limits, the test seat, and method of child restraint attachment to the test seat (e.g., type of seat belt).
Now I'm tired of googling.
