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sambaltus
Guest
First time post, so please bear with me. My wife and I are expecting our first child in a few weeks. The primary car that will transport mother and baby is, for now, a 2001 Saturn SL1. It is the predecessor to the ION series. It is a small sedan. I looked at the IIHS/NHTSA crash test ratings for this car and it did fine on offset and frontal tests, but performed poorly on the side impact test. According to the NHTSA star system, it rec'd 2 stars indicating that there is a 25% chance of a serious injury. That being said, their test is based on an adult in the backseat passenger and driver side. We are more concerned about our child. We have a child car seat that will be in the middle position in the back seat. Should this give us less reason to be concerned about a side-impact score? With the child sitting in the car seat, in the back-middle position, what is the best thing to look at in a car? I'd like to get a newer car with better crash-test results, but if the side impact isn't much of an issue for the baby in the car seat in the middle, it may not be necessary right now. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks!
sambaltus
sambaltus