Making sense of the car seat controversy

Herb Weisbaum • Profile • E-mail

When the most trusted name in consumer testing questions the effectiveness of child safety seats, parents pay attention. A story in the February issue of Consumer Reports — now withdrawn — said most of the top-selling brands of car seats “failed disastrously” in the magazine’s crash tests.

Consumer Reports “screwed up,” says Kathryn Kruger, Executive Director of the Washington State Safety Restraint Coalition. “They really upset people and created enormous confusion.”

Last week, Consumer Reports “withdrew” the story after learning the side-impact test that was supposed to be at 38 miles per hour actually simulated a crash of more than 70 mph. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration caught the mistake after reviewing the magazine’s data and redoing the tests.

SAFETY TIPS FROM THE EXPERTS Keep the child in the rear-facing position as long as possible. This is the safest position. A rear-facing infant seat is only good up to about 22 pounds. After that, you should switch to a convertible seat. Use it in the rear-facing position until the child is about 30 to 35 pounds. For more information Safety of infant car seats advisory Washington State Safety Restraint Coalition Infant Car Seats Highly Effective in Real-World Crashes How to Install Your Child's Car Seat or Booster Seat

In a statement on the agency’s Web site, NHTSA Administrator Nicole Nason says she was “troubled” by the magazine’s initial report, “because it frightened parents and could have discouraged them from using car seats.”

Consumer Reports says it will do a second round of testing and prepare a new report. “We take our credibility very seriously,” says Consumer Reports spokesman Douglas Love, who could not tell me when the new testing might be completed.

Real world  test results
All the safety experts I spoke to agree: Car seats work. Period. Dr. Fred Rivara, a pediatrician and injury prevention expert at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center, tells me it is “extremely rare” to see a child seriously hurt in a car accident, if that child is riding in a car seat. Normally, the parents come in with severe injuries, he says, “and the baby is smiling and happy because it’s been restrained in a car seat.”

At Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, researchers work with State Farm insurance to gather information on 669,000 car accidents. It’s the largest such database in the world.

“When we look at the field data, we know these seats are very effective,” says researcher Kristy Arbogast. She tells me a child in a car seat “has the lowest risk of injury” of any passenger in the vehicle. In fact, a car seat reduces a child’s likelihood of death in a crash by up to 70 percent.

Every car seat sold in this country must meet strict government standards to insure it can protect a child in a frontal crash of 30 mph. This test “simulates crash forces more severe than 97.6 percent of crashes in the real world,” explains Deborah Stewart, publisher of Safe Ride News.

The editors had a clear agenda
Consumer Reports wants the federal government to toughen its test standards. The editors want the frontal crash speed increased from 30 to 35 mph and a side-impact test added.

This was disclosed in the article, but it got lost in most of the media coverage. And it’s easy see why. The headline on the magazine’s February cover is “Safety Alert: 10 infant car seats FAIL our tests.”

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