The Need for Improved Car Seat Protection

Contrary to conventional wisdom, around 1990 the United States fell behind the European Union for baby seat safety regulations. A Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership was proposed in an attempt to bridge the gap between the United State’s subpar regulations with Europe’s regulations. The idealism behind the plan is to converge motor vehicle regulatory regulations between the United States and Europe. However, due to various resistance, lobbying, and debate about whose regulations are better, the regulations have not yet been “converged.” Car seats sold in America must meet the current safety regulations in order to be sold; however, the regulations are simply the bare minimum standards that must be met.

Nearly 15 years ago, the NHTSA published an official notice to all domestic child seat manufacturers reminding them that compliance with the minimum regulatory requirements is not enough. Despite the letter from the NHTSA, not much as been accomplished in the past fifteen years to improve the safety engineering of child seats domestically. The NHTSA also found that many child seats were being engineered to only comply with most safety-critical requirements rather than being engineered meet substantial compliance margins. Since 2000, tens of millions of child safety seats have been recalled despite the NHTSA official notice to child seat manufactures asking that it improve its engineering. Recalling millions of seats however usually is only effective for about a 50% recall rate; meaning millions of car seats are left in their defective condition and either continued to be used by consumer or re-sold in a defective condition to other unaware buyers. Additionally, recalls are only as good as the support behind the recall, if any. For example, Graco, the industry leader in car safety seats, was recently fined $10 million dollars for failing to recall defective child seats, hiding claims, and resisting regulatory efforts to investigate defects in them.

Surprisingly, despite all the third-party testing that occurs for automobiles, third-party testing for child seats is significantly less than vehicle testing and there is no safety rating system for child seats. Increased third-party testing could drastically improve child seat safety engineering. For example, there is no standard for side impact testing of child seats in the U.S., despite the proposal for such a rule over a decade ago. Europe has a consumer testing entity known as ADAC, which performs consumer testing for car seats on behalf of auto and consumer protection groups. ADAC runs annual frontal and side impact testing on child seats at 40 mph and 31 mph delta-V crash pulses. This delta-V crash testing is far more severe than anything performed in the United States. The ADAC then rates each child seat and the information gleaned from their tests is provided to the public. The United States lacks a type of ADAC agency. Further, Europe also has the EuroNCAP test program, which subjects vehicles to frontal and side impact crash testing and also requires child dummies to be secured in rear child safety seats as part of its testing. The protection to the child safety seat dummy is factored into its testing scores and ratings. For the EuroNCAP tests, the vehicle manufacturer selects the child safety seat to use; and, logically, the manufacturers selects the seat it knows to be the most effective for safety so that its car will score as high as possible. The car seat manufacturers then design and engineer safety improvements so that their car seats will be selected by the automobile company for the EuroNCAP testing and scoring. This is the free-market working at its best, but something the United States regulatory scheme does not facilitate nor propose.

A clear example of the effectiveness of this third-party testing involves the Graco SnugRide, an infant only seat. Graco first sold the SnugRide in the United States, and then sold it in Europe. However, before Graco sold the car set in Europe, it performed its own side-impact testing in order to ensure a high score in the European consumer testing. Side-impact testing was not performed by Graco for any purposes related to its United States product sales. Graco’s testing revealed that the SnugRidge inadequately protected the infant dummy’s head within the side wings of the car seat, which would lead to a severe head impact in a collision. Because of this, Graco’s U.S. based engineers designed a better side wing insert that increased the depth of the SnugRide’s side wings and positioned the side wings closer to the infant dummy’s head. Graco’s testing revealed that the re-designed SnugRide contained the infant’s head and mitigated a severe head injury. Graco then placed the SnugRide in the European market as the AutoBaby–over 10 years ago–but continued to sell the original SnugRide design in the U.S. without the safety improvements. Graco has faced a number of SnugRide lawsuits in the U.S. after head and neck injuries occurred by U.S. consumers of the SnugRide; injuries that could have been prevented had the wing re-design been implemented in the United States. This is just one example of the glaring discrepancies and juxtaposition of market forces at play between the U.S. and European regulations. Unfortunately, it’s likely going to take litigation, lawsuits, trials, large judgments, and political jockeying with corporate lobbyists before child safety seats will be manufactured in the United States above and beyond the bare minimum standards set forth in the current regulatory framework.

Infant and baby injuries are all too common due to defective child seats. The worst part is that in a lot of cases, the injuries could be significantly mitigated or avoided all together but for an industry that clings to old, bare minimum standards found in the United States while voluntarily exceeding standards and innovating child safety in Europe. If you were involved in a car crash, whether there is a claim against a child safety seat manufacturer is a viable belief and an area of liability that should be pursued and spoken with about your attorney. If your attorney is not aware of the glaring discrepancies among child seats sold in the United States and Europe, find a new attorney.