Federal crash test results?

lourdes

Well-known member
O you know how people on Facebook like to say they know a lot about car seats, on a car seat post there's one person saying that in crash test britax and diono are the safest, I told her those are independent studies but she insisted it was a federal study? Is there such a study? It's it public? I thought nhtsa tests aren't public
 
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LISmama810

Admin - CPS Technician
NHTSA tests are public, but they're hard to find/access. I'm not sure when the last ones were released.

Crash test numbers can show us numbers, but those numbers don't necessarily correlate to real-world crash performance or injury protection. A seat that does "best" on the test sled might perform worse than another seat in a real car.

A seat that tests well in one category might not do as well in another.

A seat that doesn't do as well in the simulated frontal impact might be awesome in a side impact.

Crash testing is an easy way to make sure seats are compliant with the various numbers they have to meet. It shouldn't (and really can't) be used to determine what the "best" seat on the market is.
 

SafeDad

CPSDarren - Admin
Staff member
Also, the tests for the federal standard may be self-certified, so results from manufacturer and independent labs may vary slightly. Also, they are not designed to be comparative, like the IIHS or NHTSA automotive crash test ratings. So, saying your seat did better than another seat in the pass/fail FMVSS testing is not very meaningful.

Some years ago, there was a mandate to force NHTSA to produce such a rating system for carseats, but they never did.
 

lourdes

Well-known member
I keep telling parents, a Cosco Scenera Next installed correctly it's safer than a Britax Advocate wrongly installed
But most people don't get it
 

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