A Report On Child Safety Seats
Our children and grandchildren are precious in our eyes and as they should be. Thus, for their protection, we place our children in child safety seats. I wish I could tell you that these seats are rigorously tested to confirm that our children are safe during a car wreck. Unfortunately, car seat manufacturers do the minimum amount of testing that is required to meet the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 213. This standard is grossly inadequate because it does not duplicate any conceivable real world crashes. There are no side impact tests, no rear impact crash tests, no oblique or off-set crash tests. Therefore, if you notice a manufacturer boasting that its child seat meets FMVSS 213, then you should be aware that seat is not necessarily a safe one.
In 1999, the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Dr. Ricardo Martinez, encouraged the industry to go beyond the inadequate standards noted in FMVSS 213. Dr. Martinez wrote that: "I am urging each manufacturer of child restraints to ensure that these restraints perform well beyond the minimum requirements of our standard. American families expect, and deserve, no less." Remember it is NHTSA that has the duty to promulgate these safety standards. The agency should do more than just ask the industry to improve its standards.
Unfortunately, the standard was never updated by the government, and manufacturers continue to construct seats that are not effective during car wrecks. In our opinion, it is incumbent for child safety seat and booster seat manufacturers, as well as the federal government, to do more. Other countries, including Canada, Australia, and some European nations, have performance standards for child safety seats and booster seats that are more rigorous than our country's minimal performance requirements of FMVSS 213. If the industry fails to respond to the pressures of consumers, and the government fails to enact a more meaningful child safety seat standard, then we will continue to use civil litigation to pressure manufacturers to make changes to ensure our children are safe during a wreck. In the past, the child seat industry has responded favorably after juries have told the industry that certain booster car seats were unsafe and awarded substantial damages for catastrophic injuries.
If you run across a bad child car seat, please let NHTSA know about it immediately. You can file a report online at www.nhtsa.dot.gov. For additional information on children's car seats, I encourage you to look at www.carsafety.org. This website answers basic questions on children's car seats. If you or someone you know has a child who has been injured in a car seat, contact us at Lumpkin & Reeves. We may be able to help.
