NHTSA Announces Child Car Seat Ease of Use Ratings

Driven by the Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability, and Documentation (TREAD) Act of 2000, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration studied ease of use for child car seats and released the results yesterday. This is the first rating of its kind.

The good news is that 39 out of 68 models reviewed received an overall "A" and no seat received a score lower than a "C." Car seats were evaluated based on ease of assembly, evaluation of labels and instructions, installation features and ease of securing the child. Kudos to Graco because their convertible model, the ComfortSport, was the only car seat to earn "A's" in all categories. However, the report does not state that the ComfortSport is the "best" car seat, as alleged in the headline in the Cleveland Plain Dealer indicates. There are several factors to consider when purchasing your child's car seat. Price and whether the darn thing will fit in your car? Does it fit your child? Do you want any special safety features like EPS foam? What type of harness?

It is true that an improperly installed car seat is unsafe. Unfortunately, most parents fail to correctly install the car seat. I remember my husband's frustrated mutterings as he spent two or three hours working with the car seat a few weeks ago. Parents should really take their car with the car seat installed to a nearby car seat inspection site. As the press release indicates, the new LATCH system seems to be helping ease of installation. However, only cars manufactured after September 2002 were required to have the LATCH system so certainly many parents are driving around in cars that don't have LATCH. Only Audi and one other manufacturer are retrofitting cars with LATCH. Also, the possible combinations of cars and car seats are so large that it is likely that some car seat LATCH devices won't fit in certain cars.

I would recommend careful research when making a car seat decision. There are tons of resources on the internet for parents with questions.