Behind the Scenes

Every day our award-winning journalists bring critical consumer issues and CR’s rigorous product testing to life—from investigating high drug prices to pulling apart toys for potential data privacy and security issues. Electronics Reporter Bree Fowler takes you behind the scenes.  Watch the video here!

For decades, millions of consumers have depended upon CR to help guide their decisions about cars, especially when it comes to key safety features. CR celebrates the potential of car automation systems to improve driver safety; however, our tests raise concern that current capabilities often don’t take safety into account adequately. When these features are advertised in ways that overstate their benefits, it can become a safety concern.

In CR’s rankings, Cadillac’s Super Cruise receives CR’s top spot, due in part to the fact that its automation system does the best to mitigate safety risks. Super Cruise scores above Tesla’s Autopilot, Nissan/Infiniti’s ProPilot Assist and Volvo’s Pilot Assist System.

We are urging automakers to design, introduce, and market these new auto features in a fair, honest, and safe manner. This recent release was a key step in our ongoing work to help consumers navigate connected products and the digital market. Your support helps CR continue to innovate on behalf of all consumers facing decisions in today’s rapidly changing environment.

CR’s investment to help consumers make smart choices about connected products and services is paying off, thanks in part to your ongoing support! Last year, CR and its partners published a “Digital Standard.” We wanted to identify criteria against which we can test, rate and review products and services that connect to the Internet.

We first tackled smart TVs because of their popularity—there are more than 101 million in the country. Our tests released earlier this year found that millions of smart TVs could be controlled by hackers exploiting easy to-find security flaws—this included Samsung televisions and other brands that use the Roku TV smart-TV platform.

In response, Samsung recently addressed the problem with a firmware update to 2018 TVs, and CR has confirmed that the vulnerability has been eliminated. Samsung says it will provide similar updates for last year’s 2017 smart TVs soon.

In another milestone, we also integrated the Digital Standard into our ratings when testing peer-to-peer payment services for data privacy and security. All of the companies we rated engaged and responded to our tests, with Apple, the top rated, committing to doing even better and Zelle, the lowest rated, pledging to fix issues with its product. Next up will be testing for smart appliances, online banking, and routers. Stay tuned and thank you!

In our first Chain Reaction report in 2015, 80 percent of the restaurants received a failing grade for their use of medically important antibiotics. We are pleased to report that now the top 25 chain restaurants no longer serve chicken that has been raised with medically important antibiotics. Why is this progress important? The overuse of antibiotics is leading to bacteria that develop a resistance to them.

The World Health Organization considers antibiotic-resistant bacteria a top threat to global public health. Already, resistant infections are resulting in harder-to-treat illnesses and even death. At least 23,000 Americans die from antibiotic-resistant infections every year, and at least two million get sick.

In this year’s report, “Chain Reaction IV: Burger Edition”, we found that burger chains have a long way to go to improve their antibiotics use policies. Currently, the beef sector uses more than forty percent of all medically important antibiotics sold to the meat industry. We found that the vast majority of burger chains do not have any policies. Among the burger chains, only two—BurgerFi and Shake Shack—received A grades for serving no-antibiotic beef. But the larger burger chains, including Burger King, McDonald’s, and Sonic, got failing grades, while Wendy’s got a D-.

CR and its partners are calling on restaurant chains to make firm, timebound commitments to phase out the use of antibiotics in their entire meat and poultry supply chains, except for the treatment of sick animals that have been diagnosed by a veterinarian or to control a verified disease outbreak. We are also calling on policy makers to prohibit routine antibiotic use in food animals for all purposes, including disease prevention.