We look very intensely at child safety issues. We are recalling them because we perceive a safety problem. But even when they aren't being used correctly or the seat has been recalled, the kid is so much safer in them than out of them. It is particularly proud that more than half of recalls in the past few years have been initiated by the agency because of problems that showed up in routine compliance tests rather than after consumer complaints. But that fact underscores why the government might better protect children by requiring more compliance testing before child seats are put on store shelves, as regulators in Europe do.
Car manufacturers operate under the same rules.
Yet 41 percent of child seats tested since 1990 failed at least some portion of compliance testing when the government did get around to checking them, according to records reviewed by The News. The regulations cover everything from how far a crash dummy's head and knees move forward in a test to whether the colors fade or the labels are the right size. Because the seats are already on the market, the agency chooses to ignore many of the minor violations, like harness straps that fade in color when exposed to light, Weinstein said. Although the agency technically doesn't require any testing of seats before they are sold, manufacturers are fined when the agency believes they should have known better than to sell the seat. In that case, the agency decided that Century conducted too few tests to monitor the performance of some of its 3000 and 5000 STE model seats, and questioned whether the tests that were conducted were on experimental models that varied from the seats being sold to customers.