Buying Guide to Choosing the Right Baby and Child Car Seats
It’s possible that you won’t realise until it’s too late that the infant car seat, child car seat, or booster seat you purchased for your infant, toddler, or child isn’t adequate protection for them. Why take the chance? We put each car seat through numerous rounds of crash testing, combining this with expert evaluations of how easy it is to use and how pleasant it is to travel in, so that you may select the safest and most comfortable car seat possible. Our crash tests have been developed to replicate, as realistically as possible, what takes place in actual collisions. Each car seat is subjected to a front crash, which is the equivalent of a head-on collision at around 40 miles per hour, and a side crash, which is the equivalent of two cars crashing into each other at 30 miles per hour, over and over again, with the seat installed in the various ways it can be used. The results of these tests are compared to the results of actual head-on collisions. Our specialists in child safety seats evaluate the level of comfort and support that each car seat offers, beginning with the newborn period and continuing all the way through the time when your child is no longer required to use a seat, to ensure that the seat will accommodate them as well as it should.
It is essential to install a car seat in the correct manner. If it were placed incorrectly, even a car seat from Best Buy may pose a risk to the child using it. Our professionals, along with parents and children, try on a variety of sizes to determine which ones are the most user-friendly. Join Which? to have access to all of our in-depth evaluations of kid safety seats. Are you a member already? Sign in to locate the new car seat for your child. How we determine which infant car seats, child car seats, and booster seats are the safest for use in vehicles We have tested baby car seats, child car seats, and booster seats over the course of the past 50 years. During that time, we have witnessed seats in which the forces of a crash have pulled the harness out of the seat, causing our test dummies to be ejected. We’ve seen Isofix bases with connectors that snapped under the strain, sending our test dummies crashing into the passenger seat in front of them.
We’ve also seen seat belt routing that was so poor that it pulled our test dummies’ seat belts violently up into their necks or straight into their abdomens. Both of these scenarios were extremely dangerous. All of these tests are performed by us so that you may have peace of mind knowing that your Best Buy child car seat has been through rigorous simulations of real-world collisions. Safety Our experts have developed a unique protocol for our crash testing, and they have been designed to be more rigorous than the requirements of the legal minimum level. They were developed by Euro NCAP, which stands for the New Car Assessment Programme. This programme evaluates vehicles by subjecting them to crash tests in order to determine how effectively they shield passengers in the event of a severe collision. The satisfaction of your infant Because we want to ensure that your child will be in the most comfortable posture possible while travelling, one of the aspects of each seat that we test is its ergonomic design.
Our assessments include the posture in which your baby will be held while travelling (this is especially crucial for very young newborns), the support for the head and legs, how much room there is for your kid in the seat, and how much room there is for your child to grow. Putting in place in your automobile It is absolutely necessary to check that the child safety seat you use in your vehicle is installed properly. In the event that it was not installed properly, it will not function correctly in the event of a crash. Each seat is put through its paces by our specialists, along with parents and children, in order to highlight any details that might be overlooked or forgotten. Being able to fit in your car It is also crucial to consider how much room a car seat takes up in your vehicle. If it’s too huge, you might not be able to carry your other children in a safe manner or you won’t be able to use the passenger seat at the front of the vehicle. To determine how straightforward it is to install, we put each seat through its paces in three distinct automobiles of varying makes and models.
Isofix and seatbelt modes are taken into consideration by experts. Evaluations that can be relied upon. Which? has always been a thought leader when it comes to the safety of child car seats. We have been conducting safety tests on child car seats for the past half a century, during which time we have advised parents on which kid car seats are the safest and which ones they should avoid purchasing altogether. Since 1967, when we ran our first series of tests on child safety seats, the specialists at our company have been exerting a lot of effort to question the norms and bring about positive change in the field of child safety seats. We put hundreds of different car seats through rigorous testing to determine how effectively they would protect a child in the event of a collision, and we were able to determine which seats performed the best and which performed the worst.
We evaluate the most well-known manufacturers, such as Britax, Maxi-Cosi, and Recaro, and we cover all groups and types of car seats, from those that use Isofix to those that face the rear of the vehicle.
