From our president: Testing car seats

Published: May 2014

For decades, Consumer Reports has worked to make child car seats safer. Now we've made meaningful improvements to our evaluations of infant car seats with a newly developed dynamic crash test. (Watch the video, above.)

Traditional child-seat tests—including our own previous ones—don't account for what happens when a child's head hits the interior of a vehicle.

To create a test that factors that in, we spent more than two years doing extensive research, viewing hours of crash videos, and building relationships with experts, including academics, medical staff, regulators, manufacturers, and bloggers.

Our new dynamic test, done by an outside lab, simulates more realistic conditions inside cars, including installation on an actual vehicle seat and a surface that mimics a front seatback. We also upped the speed of the crash from 30 to 35 mph. All car seats provide an essential level of protection; our goal was to make it easier to compare car seats' potential for offering an additional margin of safety. Fortunately, some manufacturers already use features that increase safety.

Our seven certified child-passenger-safety technicians evaluate how easy the seats are to use, including how clear labels and instructions are. Those factors are important for proper installation. We also evaluate each car seat in five vehicle types that pose particular challenges.

Consumer Reports' test results have helped us identify features and technologies that we believe can make a big difference in protecting the smallest passengers. We're hopeful that publishing the results will lead to even safer car seats.