Car Seats
According to the National Transportation Safety
Board, over 17,000 children under the age of 10 were
killed in traffic accidents in the last decade. Poor
design quality and minimal federal standards for
child restraints and car seats have contributed to
these fatalities. The primary standard for car seat
design is Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS)
213, issued in 1970. It outlines the minimum performance
of child safety restraints. FMVSS 213 is not a design
standard, it is a performance standard, so the manufacturers
can design car seats any way they like, as long as
their designs meet the minimum performance standard.
Manufacturers also perform their own testing, and
so the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration)
does not verify the test results nor do they conduct
independent evaluations. This lack of regulation
allows manufacturers to implement designs based on
factors such as manufacturing costs, as opposed to
safety. Millions of car child safety seats have been
recalled due to a variety of defects.
If you have
been involved in an accident wherein you believe
your child safety restraint or car seat functioned
improperly, here are some considerations for your
child restraints and car seats:
- Is your seat ramp properly designed? A car’s
seat ramp (the part of the seat that you
sit on) should be slanted upward such that you
have a better chance of staying in your seat in
the event of an accident.
- Are your seats made and attached according to
government regulations? Or, were they torn
from the car during the accident’s impact?
- Were the seats too weak to sustain an impact?
Manufacturer may claim that the seat should yield
with the impact and then pop back up, but “yield” is
often a manufacturer’s code word for “fail.” When
a passenger is behind the front seat, however,
a head-to-head collision can cause brain trauma
for both.
If you believe you may have a car seat injury case, contact
us today for more information.
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