News NHTSA reviewing carseat standards

I'm hoping they add some sort of side-impact testing. What would you like to see changed?

NHTSA Statement on Review of Federal Standards for Child Safety Seats

March 2, 2009. At the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the safety of infants and children is vitally important. That is why parents and caregivers alike can be assured that correctly placing your child in a safety seat in the rear of the vehicle is absolutely the best protection against serious or fatal injury in a crash.
Every single child seat on the market today meets our rigorous safety standards, without exception. Our standards mean that each and every child seat on the market must withstand a crash test that replicates the forces found in nearly 99 percent of all crashes involving infants.
Though current standards are exceedingly tough, the agency is always looking at ways to make highway travel even safer for children. Accordingly, NHTSA has launched a top to bottom review of current child safety seat standards. That review will be swift and thorough.
Meanwhile, the parents of America need not be alarmed about the safety of children while riding in the family car.
For additional information on child safety seats, click here.

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Definitely would LOVE to see some side impact standards, and some focus on neck loading in older forward-facing harnessed children (who could be in a booster, but are in a five point harness instead). I want to know if the Swede's argument that FF harnessing for older children is risky to the neck/boosters are better pans out in our US testing.

Side impact standards would be great. I would also like to see them release the data from every seat tested. I really think that's what going to make seats safer, when people can see which ones actually performed better. I wouldn't buy a car without knowing how it did in crash tests, shouldn't we have the same info available for car seats?

I wanted a graduated result like cars have. This simple pass/fail does nothing for us.

RFing to 55 lbs! Well, basically all the Jenny said.

scatterbunny said:

Definitely would LOVE to see some side impact standards, and some focus on neck loading in older forward-facing harnessed children (who could be in a booster, but are in a five point harness instead). I want to know if the Swede's argument that FF harnessing for older children is risky to the neck/boosters are better pans out in our US testing.

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- I agree with this. The Swedish studies are compelling, but I'm not sure what is right (harness or booster for older child).
In addition:
-Side impact testing
-Rear facing to 55lbs
-Regulation of the manufacturers instead of relying on their self-regulation:thumbsdown:

twinsmom said:

- I agree with this. The Swedish studies are compelling, but I'm not sure what is right (harness or booster for older child).
In addition:
-Side impact testing
-Rear facing to 55lbs
-Regulation of the manufacturers instead of relying on their self-regulation:thumbsdown:

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I think they would self-regulate pretty well if they HAD to release their crash test results. I feel like it would also prevent some recalls, but I really don't have anything to prove that, just a feeling.

I know there are supposed to be huge differences in forces, but I want the testing done at 35 mph. Frankly, I consider that low still. Maybe it's cuz I live in CA, but people go 60 mph or more on streets here. Even if they slam on their brakes, they still might be going 35 rather than 30.

Interesting quote from the blog today...
I'm thinking higher speed tests aren't the only answer :twocents:

Side impact? Better dummies? I vote for those
http://carseatblog.com/?p=1468

" As for testing at higher speeds, well, we’ve got a test that’s better than 98% of all car crashes. In the JPMA response to the Tribune article, the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute (UMTRI) is quoted as saying that the likelihood of increasing the safety of seats won’t go up if the speed of the test is increased, but the cost of the seats will. Think of cost that will have to go into each seat to make it strong enough to pass the faster test. It would also probably increase the weight of an infant carrier."

I'm not into laws of physics or anything. From what I read, it sounds like the 30 mph speed of the current test is fine. We need side impacts and sleds that are more like real vehicles. I'd like them to check out 20 pound baby's spines after being crashed in these tests too. (Dummy spines, of course.) I have no idea how dummies work or what all they currently check for. It just seems that if we know 1 year olds are too little to forward face, that there should be dummy test data to back that up rather than all the fatalities from real world crashes that apparently have no relation to car seat requirements.

What everyone else said. Also, can they allow for a foot prop? That would be sweet.

scatterbunny said:

Definitely would LOVE to see some side impact standards, and some focus on neck loading in older forward-facing harnessed children (who could be in a booster, but are in a five point harness instead). I want to know if the Swede's argument that FF harnessing for older children is risky to the neck/boosters are better pans out in our US testing.

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That is what I am most concerned about also and would love to see!

The problem with getting better child dummies is that nobody wants to let their deceased child's body be tested and manipulated so that the engineers and designers of the dummies have actual data about how a child/infant's body behaves. Even if you can find parents who are willing to allow it, nobody wantw to do it because they don't want to be seen as torturing/mutilitating baby bodies. It's different when an adult leaves their body to science.

I'm going to be the odd-man out and say that I don't think test results should be released. I've long felt there is an inherent danger in there being a "safest" seat because it may not fit in a vehicle or it may not fit the child or maybe the parent doesn't find it easy to use. Then that seat which a parent bought because it was "safest" would end up being potentially the most dangerous.

Then there's the factor of competition - yeah, other manufacturers might redesign seats to compete, but the manufacturer which had *the* safest seat would basically be free to set whatever price they wanted. People who had the money would pay - all the rest would sit on the sidelines wondering if their child was in mortal danger because they couldn't pay the price.

And what happens if said "safest" seat has a design flaw or a manufacturing defect? Is it still safest? What if it takes a full year of investigation before the recall comes down the pipes? Would having a higher number of those seats in circulation mean more kids were potentially injured in a collision?

So really, I strongly believe that exact numbers shouldn't be released. Most manufacturing defects are found after the fact either through real world use, further crash testing done by the manufacturer, or compliance testing. Thankfully most aren't fatal defects, but what if it was? A simple rating of meets standards, slightly exceeds standards, or clearly exceeds standards might be useful, but some of the same limitations of issuing exact numbers would still apply.

I am curious to know what would happen if they started allowing a foot prop with rf'ing foot. There isn't anything in CMVSS regulations that limits manufacturer design of a seat, but nobody has ever tried to certify a seat to higher weight limits or with a hugely different design. But the US market is larger than the CDN market, so maybe it would be a big enough driving force to actually bring some of those manufacturers into the North American market. :shrug-shoulders:

At any rate, reviewing the standards is a good thing. It will be interesting to see what the end result is.

I was reading this today and thought that this is what the thread is about. Do they have anything to do with eachother?
http://www.autoblog.com/2009/03/03/nhtsa-in-hot-seat-after-troubling-baby-car-seat-tests-found/

Possibly. It could also have nothing to do with it, and just be time for a periodic review. Either way, I think it's a good thing.

I don't think releasing the test results would do any of those things. Those are the exact same arguments that were used to fight releasing the test info for cars, and the result was that end the end, EVERYONE won. Even the cheapest, crappiest cars became safer as a result. :twocents:

snowbird25ca said:

I'm going to be the odd-man out and say that I don't think test results should be released. I've long felt there is an inherent danger in there being a "safest" seat because it may not fit in a vehicle or it may not fit the child or maybe the parent doesn't find it easy to use. Then that seat which a parent bought because it was "safest" would end up being potentially the most dangerous.

Then there's the factor of competition - yeah, other manufacturers might redesign seats to compete, but the manufacturer which had *the* safest seat would basically be free to set whatever price they wanted. People who had the money would pay - all the rest would sit on the sidelines wondering if their child was in mortal danger because they couldn't pay the price.

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I see your point here--and it's a good one--but it doesn't necessarily have to be that way. Rather than releasing actual numbers, they could do a star rating system just like they do on cars. There could be many seats that get 5-star ratings--not just one. They might not all be the most expensive ones either.

Right now, expensive seats are already perceived as being safer, when we know that's not necessarily true. A company would be smart to market an inexpensive 5-star seat to compete with the expensive ones. They'd probably sell like hotcakes. (That's a weird term, isn't it? "Selling like hotcakes?" Anyway...)

pixels99 said:

The problem with getting better child dummies is that nobody wants to let their deceased child's body be tested and manipulated so that the engineers and designers of the dummies have actual data about how a child/infant's body behaves. Even if you can find parents who are willing to allow it, nobody wantw to do it because they don't want to be seen as torturing/mutilitating baby bodies. It's different when an adult leaves their body to science.

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Not to derail this thread, but do you have a reference/source for this comment? I mean, we already know how the human body works. I recently attended an hour-long lecture by a long-time automotive safety engineer on the development of test dummies. From what she said, it's more a matter of developing better instrumentation, making dummies that better represent how human bodies react - the neck on dummies has changed dramatically over the past 30 years, etc. She didn't mention a thing about cadavers.

She also mentioned a single Hybrid III dummy can cost around $70K per dummy depending on its exact configuration and they are re-configured and used over and over due to the high cost of fully replacing a single dummy. I just had a look at my notes from her lecture and can't resist tossing out that interesting factoid.