More car booster seats for children are getting top safety ratings. But the insurance organization that evaluates the seats every year warns that over half of the models it examined aren’t suitable for all kids, and some should be avoided altogether.
The ratings, from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, designated 31 of the 83 booster seats it examined as “best bets.” That means they correctly position a vehicle’s safety belt on a typical child in the 4 to 8 age range — the kids for whom boosters are designed — in almost any car, minivan or SUV.
In other cases, however, the boosters don’t consistently provide a good fit for all kids in all vehicles. As Forbes noted, the institute advised parents to make sure a lap belt lies flat across a child’s upper thighs, not higher up on the abdomen. The shoulder belt should fit snugly across the middle of the child’s shoulder, not off the shoulder or on the neck.
At the bottom of the rankings were six boosters designated “not recommended”: Evenflo Chase, Evenflo Express, Evenflo Generations 65, Evenflo Sightseer, Safety 1st All-in-One and Safety 1st Alpha Omega Elite.
But as The Washington Post reports, the products generally have improved. When the insurance institute first started rating them in 2008, only 10 received “Best Bets” grades.
“Just four years into our ratings program, parents have a wide variety of top-rated seats to choose from,” Anne McCartt, the institute’s senior vice president for research, said in a statement. “Still, boosters that don’t consistently provide good belt fit outnumber the ones that do, so consumers need to keep paying attention to the issue.”
In a separate highway safety development, the National Transportation Safety Board on Wednesday called on Kentucky and other states to amend laws to require that seat belts be worn by people riding in 15-passenger vans.
As The Associated Press reports, the safety board made that recommendation while issuing its final written report on a crash of a truck and a passenger van last year that killed 11 people on a Kentucky highway. In Kentucky, the current seat belt requirement covers only vehicles designed to carry 10 or fewer people.
In connection with its investigation into the crash, the safety board previously made the ground-breaking recommendation that truckers and bus drivers be barred from using cellphones — either handheld or hands-free devices — while operating their vehicles.
STUART SILVERSTEIN
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