Dad finds harness release issues with Safety 1st Vantage child seats

You may have seen a report on YouTube or your local news showing one consumer's concern over the ability of some Safety 1st Vantage child seats to keep the harness tight. In the video, Bryan Dussault of Chicago documents the ability to loosen the straps on some samples of the Vantage seat without touching the release mechanism for the harness. The corresponding story indicates that he has been in contact with Dorel (the parent company of Safety 1st) as well as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) which governs child seat issues. 

 
Certainly, the ability of a harness to loosen without intentional release of its locking mechanism is cause for serious concern as the forces in a crash would be far greater than simply pulling on the harness and would likely lead to injury or even ejection of a child in a real crash event.

We recently evaluated the Vantage Toddler/booster seat where it earned high ratings for its performance not only in simulated crash tests on the test sled but in our ease-of-use and fit-to-vehicle evaluations. In none of the simulated crash tests with dummies representing 3-year-old children did the harnesses loosen. Today, we also took the opportunity to re-check the three samples of the Vantage that we still had on the shelf for this issue and found that each held the harness locked even when we pulled on them.

When looking closely at the seats we also checked samples (26 total) of other Dorel-manufactured toddler/booster, convertible and infant models from Safety 1st, Eddie Bauer and Maxi-Cosi that included a similar mechanism for retaining harness tension. We found that they also stayed tight.  Though our test samples proved secure, should Dorel or NHTSA investigations find that there is an issue with the harness locking mechanism on seats they test, it may not be isolated to the Vantage model alone.

If you own a Safety 1st Vantage seat or other harnessed model manufactured by Dorel (marketed as Cosco, Safety 1st, Eddie Bauer and Maxi-Cosi) you may gain some peace of mind from conducting your own pull test similar to the one Dussault performs in his video. After you've pulled the harness adjuster tight, pull on the harness straps at the shoulder area. These straps should remain tight and not loosen or pull out until you've intentionally pushed the release button near the adjuster strap. If they do, we recommend that you discontinue use of the seat as soon as you can. Dorel Customer Service can be reached at (800) 544-1108 and owners can report any loosening to NHTSA online  or via phone on weekdays at (888) 327-4236.

Update: Our review of the NHTSA database for similar complaints to Dussault's yielded a handful of complaints (post-2005) on a variety of Dorel models that described similar issues related to harnesses not remaining tight.  Our search also showed that Dorel had previous recalls related to the locking mechanism on the harness in both 2005 and 2007.
 
On March 5, NHTSA opened a preliminary investigation into the harness issues on the Vantage seat.

Update: On July 2, 2010 NHTSA upgraded the preliminary investigation to an engineering analysis, and expanded it to include all 2008 and 2009 child seats with a center front adjuster that were made by Dorel Juvenile Group.