Safety 1st Reveals New Car Seat, New Crash Testing Method
Baby products manufacturer Dorel Juvenile Group recently unveiled a new car seat under their Safety 1st brand that features side impact head wings with unique air cushions. The side-impact head wings on the new Complete Air car seat will not only shield the child from intrusion into the vehicle, the Air Protect pads on each side also release air upon impact to slow the ride-down time, or the time it takes for the child's head to come to a complete stop. Reducing ride-down time should reduce the potential for and severity of injury.
While the new car seat looks cool and the Air Protect head wings are an exciting innovation, one of the most interesting things about Dorel's announcement, from my standpoint, is that the company has worked with Kettering University's Crash Safety Center to develop a new side-impact crash-testing method that was used in developing this car seat. They're calling it the Dorel/Kettering method, and it simulates not just the crash forces of a side-impact collision, it also mimics an intruding vehicle door. Vehicle intrusion in side-impact crashes accounts for a lot of serious injuries, so this new type of crash testing may hold a lot of promise in helping car seat manufacturers figure out how best to prevent those injuries.
The Safety 1st Complete Air car seat holds children rear-facing from 5-40 lbs, and forward-facing from 22-50 lbs. The car seat should be available at Babies R Us beginning July 1. You can see crash-test footage of the Dorel/Kettering method at the Safety 1st Air Protect website. The crash tests are part of the product video on the home page.
Comments
I need to buy a carseat for my 9 month old son as he will outgrow his bucket soon. This new seat from Safety 1st seems great but I am hesitant to buy a totally new product. Are you recomminding this seat?
Hi,
I’m a soon-to-be mom and am having some trouble figuring out which car seat to buy. I don’t want to strap my daughter in and have her come out upside down! M, can you recommend something? I was doing some snooping around online and found a site that’s offering a convertible car seat for free. I know you need to fill out a few other things to get it, but who cares? Free is free. Anyway, I’d love all the suggestions I can get. If anyone else is interested in a good car seat, here’s the place.
http://www.healthbeautyncs.com/rd_p?p=192109&t=9530&a=12263-35t554&gift=12263
Thanks for your help!
Cindy
I think this is a very nice seat and will have a review of it up within the week. Installing it rear-facing is a bit tricky so I’d suggest trying one out in the car first to see if you can do it properly.
As for the Britax deal listed in a comment, I lov Britax seats and that would be a nice choice, but I’d just buy one versus signing up with a site that requires you to complete their offers (and it says in the fine print that you may have to buy stuff from partner sites to qualify). If it sounds too good to be true…