Safety Ratings for Infant Car Seats

The safety ratings for infant car seats are intended to ensure that the seats meet some minimum standards for keeping children safe. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) provides a five-star rating system on the various infant car seats that are on the market. They use four criteria in their evaluations: installation instructions; evaluation of the labels; the vehicle installation features; and securing the child.

  1. Instruction Manual

    • The NHTSA made this a point of evaluation safety ratings for infant car seats because the directions should contain very clear instructions for the proper operation and installation of the infant car seat. The instructions should eliminate as much text as possible without omitting important information. The NHTSA rating considers how quickly a consumer will locate the manual after unpacking the seat. Quickly finding the instructions improves the chances of the individual making use of them. The manual should have clear information on things such as the appropriate size of children who will use the seat, and illustrations of installation methods, such as routing the belt and lower attachments and tethering the seat to the car's factory seats.

    Evaluation of Labels

    • This category examines the content and clarity of the labeling attached to the infant car seat. The best labels (those getting five stars from the NHTSA for this criterion) make ample use of pictograms and simple illustrations to help consumers understand the directions and learn how to operate the car seat more effectively. An example would be when a consumer is looking for clear and concise information regarding the product's maximum child size, as shown via a graphical representation of a child secured in the seat with the height and weight text next to the illustration.

    Installation

    • This standard measures how easy the physical act of installation is for the user. Some items that are examined include the ease with which a male with large hands would have manipulating certain features of the infant car seat. A good example would be the degree of difficulty threading the vehicle's seat belt through the belt path. For consumers who are not that familiar with child restraints, or may be switching the car seat back and forth between vehicles, they would likely prefer a product that's rated higher for ease-of-installation. Those products tend to be more convenient and have quick and easy attributes for securing the infant car seat to a vehicle.

    Securing the Child

    • This criterion receives more weight that the others for obvious reasons. The best rating for securing the child to the seat is awarded to products that are simple and easy to use.

      A preference is give to products that do not require assembly; seats that do required some assembly are more prone to be use incorrectly. The consumer should not have to do things such as re-thread the harness clip. It should be easy to properly position the seat. The rating also considers the user-friendliness of components such as buckles and harnesses.

    Consumer Reports

    • There are also independent third-party entities, such as Consumer Reports.org, that evaluate the safety of infant car seats. Consumer Reports examines the following categories: crash ratings, ease of use and fit to the vehicle. Each area is judged individually as excellent, very good, good, fair and poor. The item is also given a combined rating for the three areas. The overall score is given in a range of 0 to 100.

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