Consumer Reports test on combination child seats finds fault with five models

Few headlines would get a parent worked up faster than “Your child seat is unsafe.” That’s the subtext in a

Consumer Reports

headline about a story on combination child seats. Those are forward-facing car seats with removable harnesses; the harness stays in to secure smaller children but can be removed to secure larger children in the seat with the vehicle’s seatbelt. After

CR

examined a number of units, the magazine said five models made by Britax, Cosco, Graco, and Harmony “break in CR’s tests.”

On most of the seats, the top tether broke or harness support hardware in the rear shell broke. The Graco

Atlas

65 suffered the most serious issue, when four crashes “resulted in pieces of sharp plastic in areas that may contact the child.” That happened when the seat, rated for 65 pounds, was tested with 52- and 62-pound dummies. But

CR

doesn’t say if the test dummies measured any damage, or if these failures would hurt a child.

CR

says near the beginning of the article that it “knows of no injuries related to the structural failures revealed in our

crash tests

.” We have no way of knowing if the seats are truly dangerous, or if it’s only that they can’t stand up flawlessly to tests they weren’t engineered for.

That’s whee the small print comes in. The

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration

, the same agency that tests and certifies vehicles for sale in the U.S., tests and certifies all child seats. Every model tested by

CR

fulfills the government’s standard, but

CR developed a harsher test

to “highlight car seats that provide a greater margin of safety.” The

NHTSA

runs a car seat on a sled into a barrier at 30 miles per hour, for instance, while

CR

performs the same test at 35 mph. Since the baby-seat makers — like nearly all companies — engineer their products to fulfill the federal criteria, it’s not surprising the seats have small issues in harder tests.

The Juevenile Products Manufacturers’ Association

issued a statement

on third-party testing that didn’t mention

CR

but is clearly aimed at the magazine. The U.S. and European nonprofit organization

Car Seats for the Littles wrote a

lengthy response to the

CR

piece, saying in the end that “we stand by the industry standards,” but also, “We absolutely respect what Consumer Reports is trying to do with this reporting, but we’re not so fond of the fear-provoking headlines.” The organization

did the same thing four years ago

when

CR

changed its test protocol to go beyond the federal standard.

The companies also responded to the

CR

test, saying that they meet U.S. standards and haven’t fielded any injury reports from their seats, but that they would continue a dialogue with

CR

.