When it comes to child safety, parents are racing to provide the best for their precious cargo. Many moms and dads will be interested to know that there has been a debate going on for about 20 years regarding differences between the United States and many European countries when it comes to child-safety seats.
Different countries have different processes for determining car-seat safety, and these differences lead to distinctive products. Are some safer than others?
According to Mark Evanko, executive vice president of quality assurance and product safety for Dorel – a global car seat manufacturer, European nations adopted the United Nations R44 recommendation to utilize the ISOfix system for rear-facing seats in the early 1990’s. With ISOfix, the base of the car seat attaches to the two metal hooks at the bottom of the seatback and utilizes a support leg that extends from the bottom of the car seat base to the floor of the car.
Evanko added that the ISOfix idea was suggested to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration a few years after it became a requirement in Europe, but NHTSA did not adopt the European standards.
Instead, the United States adopted LATCH (Lower Anchors and Tethers for CHildren), using a top-tether system in which belts are secured to three metal hooks and tightened down.
David Campbell, standards consultant for the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association, suggested that the difference is mostly philosophical and would not say whether one system is safer than the other. But he did say that European regulators are not fans of the top tether.
According to NHTSA, there are several reasons U.S. regulations do not require support legs on car seats. Here’s an excerpt from NHTSA’s official response: “Child restraints must meet the minimum performance requirements without the use of support legs that attach from the child restraint to the floor of the vehicle or any other type of supplemental device. These requirements are meant to ensure that child restraints provide a satisfactory level of performance when they are used by parents or other caregivers.
“The agency found that a high percentage of parents did not use the upper tether strap to secure the child restraint even when a tether was available. Because a support leg is similar to a tether, there is likelihood that the support leg would be misused if the installation requires further action from the parent.”
In other words, NHTSA aims to keep the system as simple as possible in order to reduce the chance of user error.
Some European perspective comes from Anders Eugensson, director of government affairs for Volvo, who explained that his team has made visits to the United States to encourage NHTSA to implement support-leg technology.
Eugensson also suggested that there might be another reason NHTSA hasn’t brought support legs to the States: “The bench seat that is used in car-seat testing in the U.S. is from a 1970s model vehicle [1974 Chevrolet Impala, according to NHTSA] and is only the bench seat–there’s no floor to rest a support leg on.”
Volvo safety representatives have recommended modernizing the U.S. test seat to include a floor. While NHTSA said that improvements were made to the test seat in 2003 to represent more modern models, those improvements did not include the addition of a floor.
Since several manufacturers produce car seats globally and develop their products in accordance with the specific safety guidelines of each country or governing body, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel in order to make European products available in the United States. The primary roadblock remains the opinions of those in charge of car-seat safety regulations. Whether one system is safer than the other is still being debated, and we will provide updates and further comments from other sources as they become available.
