Car seat Dangers Are Worth Talking About!

In the wonderful due date group of over 800 women I am in the topic of car seat safety has come up more than a few times. This is a great thing and of course expected as parents just want the best and safest products for their babies. What I didn’t expect was to see so many car seat modifications and after market products being shared as wonderful. I had to remind myself that many of the 800 mothers are in fact new mothers and perhaps our society is doing a poor job of educating the population on car seat safety.

 What are car seat dangers?

The obvious ones are a car seat that doesn’t fit a child well, an improperly installed car seat, an expired car seat, and a car seat not properly used! Even though I would consider myself an experienced mother I know that there is always something knew to learn. While asking car seat experts for their newborn car seat recommendation I learned that a car seat I was thinking about getting is known to not fit small newborns well even though the box says it should by weight. Turns out it is known to not fit well for height! Remember that rear facing babies need to have the straps at or below the shoulders. The seat I was looking to get had straps that are too high for some newborns and thus not safe. I am so happy I asked around or I would not have known any better.

The other safety issues though are harder to spot if you are not aware of them!

Should you tell a Mom her car seat isn’t being used safely?

    This was one of the questions in the group, she had a friend who had a custom cover made for her little ones car seat and this was my not so graceful advice:

I have noticed that after someone puts so much money and effort and love into something like that it is near impossible to get them to see logic and reason. You will be vilified for even trying but if something happens I know I couldn’t live with myself had I not mentioned the safety issue. 

YES, mention safety issues even if doing so doesn’t make you popular!

On a side note: I can’t see how anyone morally agrees to even make those modifications…. sadly consumers think that just because we can purchase something must mean it is safe to do so.

To learn more about why after market products are not safe you can read up on them here: http://csftl.org/non-regulated-products/

Keep Safe! And be brave when you see a safety concern!