The Best Car Seats

The Best Car Seats

A well selected and properly installed seat can keep a child safe for several years. Finding the best car seat should be at the top of every new parent's to-buy list.

Not only will you need one to take your baby home from the hospital, but for every car ride thereafter. Every state requires that children up to 4 years old be secured in a car seat while riding, and most require booster seats for older children.

The proper seats for children can reduce fatalities of infants younger than one year by 71 percent and by 54 percent for children aged one to four years.

Key Findings

There was a wide disparity in how easy the best car seats were to properly install. A recent study shows keeping children 23 months old and younger in a rear-facing position helps prevent severe injury. Still others found rear-facing car seat installations more difficult than forward-facing.

Two seats, the Evenflo Triumph Advance and the Recaro Signo, cracked during testing but they — and all the seats tested — still passed the federal standard for crash performance.

The Evenflo Triumph Advance convertible seat cracked when officials tested it in a simulated 30 mph frontal impact on the test sled in a rear-facing orientation with a 3-year-old sized dummy and three-point belt.

After the test results were brought to Evenflo's attention, they quickly modified that mold, eliminating the small indent. Evenflo Triumph Advance seats manufactured after Dec. 4, 2008 were made with the corrected mold. In several retests of the corrected version, the seat did not crack.

A rear-facing infant seat is the best car seat during the first stage. A built-in harness secures the infant, reclined at an angle typically between 30 and 45 degrees, to provide optimum protection in a crash without interfering with breathing. Infant seats can accommodate most children from birth up to about 22 lbs. or more.

With its removable carrier and swing-up handle, an infant seat lets you move your baby in and out of the car without disturbing him. Though it might be a better value to jump into a convertible seat first, infant seats, by their design, tend to be more compact and secure infants better when compared to larger convertible models, which is why the infant seats are recommended as the first step.

Though convertible seats can be used for a newborn, babies will likely fit better in an infant seat. Convertible seats become the best car seats when a baby's weight reaches the infant seat's limit, which may be as early as 6 to 9 months old.

Orienting the convertible seat in a rear-facing position until your baby is at least 1 year old and over 20 lbs. is a must. But new research shows that babies up to 23 months are better protected when rear-facing.

Eventually, you can "convert" the seat to face forward, and use it that way until your toddler reaches the seat's forward-facing height and weight limits. Overall, height limits for the convertible seats go up to 53 inches, and weight limits go from 5 pounds to 80 pounds, so they can be used for several years.

When in doubt, Throw it out

The results from the Evenflo Triumph Advance and Recaro Signo tests reinforce the message that it's best not to re-use any seat for children that has been in a crash, whether or not it shows visible cracks.

After many tests, even models that were not visibly cracked were still potentially compromised: Plastics were visibly stressed, internal structures and bars were bent or changed position, and parts that help create a taut, secure fit became pinched or difficult to use.

Other Things To Know

The safest place for your best car seat is in the center of the rear seat. Installation can be tricky, however, so be sure to keep the seat's packaging if you need to return it due to poor fit.

A five-point harness (which has straps for the shoulders, waist and between the legs) provides the best support and puts the least amount of pressure on the baby. Harnesses that adjust the belt in the front are easier to use than those that adjust in the back.

When purchasing a car seat for infants, don't buy seats that come with padded overhead shields that swing down in front of the harness. The NHTSA says these shields come up too high on infants and make proper harnessing difficult.

Chest clips that snap the two belts together (like a car seat belt) seem to be more kid-proof than slide-in clips. Reviewers say some older toddlers can slip out of the latter type.

Whichever seat you purchase, check the return policy and keep the receipt until you're sure the seat is compatible with your vehicle. Not all seats fit perfectly in all cars. CarSeatData.org features a car seat compatibility database to match up makes and models of cars with appropriate car seats.

Feel free to contact me if you have questions about the best car seats by clicking here.

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