This has always bugged me.
"You can compare safety ratings for cars, but not for the safety of car seats."
I have recently gained some insight into part of the reason why there aren't safety ratings released... What if everyone went out and bought "the absolute safest seat" while there was an ongoing defect investigation? Sometimes safety agencies know of defects but it takes time to work with the manufacturer. In a case like that, all of those parents who thought they were buying the safest seat might have really had it backfire on them - not to mention that incompatibilities would be bound to arise if everyone bought the same seat across the board which would also suddenly turn that "safest seat" into a ticking time bomb...
For that reason I don't believe that car seats should be given safety ratings the same way as a car - there are just too many variables affecting the safety of a car seat.
Why did they only release some of the videos, not all? After reading how the SS1 did in a Toyota Sequoia, it makes me nervous about the SS1 in my Sienna. But, at least it stayed on the base.
If these are NHTSAs own tests, why are the seats still on the market? Not that I think they should all be pulled. I'm just wondering. I understand the flaws to the Consumer Reports tests. But isn't this different? Or am I missing something?
All of the Combi seats were recalled and the base was updated to remove the problem of the seat detaching from the base. The Evenflo Discovery in the test was also one that has been recalled and I could tell by the footage that it didn't have the "fix" on it, so again - irrelevant in terms of current Discovery seats.
I thought the same thing. That test may say more about the performance of the Scion than of the SS1. The seat that failed consistently across the board in a variety of vehicles, the Combi Centre was recalled. The other seats may or may not be "safe enough". These tests just don't tell us one way or the other.
I agree, it does seem that there is something about the Scion that makes car seats perform less than optimally in it.
Maybe they need to test on multiple types and styles of benches in order to make sure the car seat is compatible with the variety of situations it will be used in. They should also have to pass an ease of use test, IMHO.
With that Graco, though, it looks like it was improperly snapped into the base.
I also thought the Graco looked like it wasn't properly snapped in to the base. It seemed to fly off pretty much immediately and I wouldn't have expected detachment from the base until the seat had rotated a bit while still on the base had it initially started out attached.
The limitations of multiple types and styles of benches is that car manufacturers are always updating their interiors. There are potentially infinite combinations and designs, and when you start trying to test a carseat for every single variable a car manufacturer might put into a car, it becomes a very expensive prospect at the very least. It also means that a seat which passes with flying colors in one model year might do poorly a few years down the road when the car manufacturer re-designs the interior. That's a big expense to carseat manufacturers if they're left to bear the burden of changing their designs constantly...
I think there is way more to this then anyone knows just yet. Also if NHTSA was seeing these results don't you think recalls would have been issued by now for all these manufactures?
Combi and Discovery were recalled. They were the only consistent flying off the base results. As for the other values, given that it's very vehicle dependent, I don't think that a carseat manufacturer should bear the responsibility to recall and redesign the seat because there is a problem with it in one specific vehicle. Idealistically we'd like to see all seats compatible and easy to use in all vehicles, but we don't live in an ideal world. Additionally, some of the factors of pass/fail in regards to HIC could be influenced by the position the front passenger or driver seat is set at, whether or not there is cargo in the trunk and how much that cargo weighs. I would imagine there's an additional difference between leather and plain fabric upholstery because one is often more easily compressible than the other. So in other words, there are just so many things to account for, I think it would be insane to force recalls on all the manufacturers that had any of the tests with a failure - at least the ones that haven't been recalled... The ones that were recalled were recalled for widespread failure, not episodic ones related specifically to the vehicle the seat was installed in.
Again, it all comes down to real world experience, and kids aren't being killed in mass numbers due to carseat failures. Most of the time when kids die in a collision it's due to improper use in one aspect or another. Unfortunately I don't even know how easy it would be to correct ease of use... some people don't have the reading comprehension to understand a manual, and what's common sense to one person isn't common sense to another. Maybe a video manual being included with seats would be a good thing - though that could have limitations too due to variations in vehicle designs and rules...
I think in an ideal world we'd see more car manufacturers doing tests of carseats before sending a new car to market, and including a list of carseats which were compatible in their vehicle. There would still be situations which would make even the recommended seats fail, but it would be a starting point.
FWIW, some of the points of failure in terms of exceeding head or chest injury criteria I suspect we would see in convertible seats as well.
This study here talks about rf'ing seats and additional loads imposed on the child when there was cargo in the trunk. It includes crash scene photos and injury/death descriptions, so isn't reading for those of you who are sensitive. Pg 5 does have the summary about rf'ing restraints though, so that would be a safe place for everyone to look. :thumbsup: There were 2 interesting points made in that study that the Tribune article seems to support... The first was that some sort of energy absorbing foam should be required in the head area to reduce the force on the child's head. It was noticed that in small vehicles there was the impact of the carseat hitting the vehicle seat during downward rotation and the child having that additional force placed on his/her head in an impact. The other point showed the pictures of back seats post collision and analyzed the weight of the cargo in the trunk and talked about how it could affect a child in a rf'ing restraint. The conclusion was still one showing rf'ing to be much safer in real world experience, but the points raised are very good points...
Anyways, my point is that I believe we would see many of the increases in injury measurements - except obviously separation from the base, if it was a rf'ing convertible seat in the test. Perhaps a design limiting downward rotation - like Australian style tethering or something along those lines, would do more in the way of making sure rf'ing seats performed as expected.
In the end though, it all comes down to the same thing.. We know that rf'ing seats do an excellent job of protecting children. We know that head injuries in rf'ing children are mostly due to misuse, and that rf'ing restraints are more effective at protecting children under age 2 than a ff'ing restraint.
I'd like to see CHOP put together an evaluation of injuries to kids in rf'ing restraints and evaluate the cause of those injuries - loose harness, over weight limit, improper install, small backseat, etc.
In the meantime, I wouldn't panic over a seat on a base, and in most cases prefer base install over baseless. Less room for error for the average parent. I also don't find the results to be that worthy of panic given that the repeat failures were recalled seats. Given the recall we'd expect those seats to fly off the base. :shrug-shoulders:
