The 12 passenger van is in some ways, the scourge of the Child Passenger Safety world. These vans often lack head restraints, are often used to improperly transport young children, and are home to a host of creative safety practices due to their age or their occupation.
We’re thrilled to see more laws in more states align closer to best practice. As of January 1, 2017, California will join the states with laws requiring children to remain rear facing in their car seats until at least 2 years of age. On that day, California also adopts a law banning all cell phones from being held by the driver.
Each year since 2009, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety has released their IIHS booster ratings. These ratings are based primarily on the fit of the 6 year old crash test dummy. Fit is the best indication of performance: regardless of how many optional features a booster seat has, if it doesn’t place the vehicle seat belt properly on the child, it can’t do its job.
Families come in all shapes and sizes and have a wide variety of needs when it comes to car seats. One area where we see a lot of questions is what to do when the back seat is full of children, or when two children need to ride next to each other. We call this setup three car seats across and it’s a topic that has a lot of variables.
A common theme of our visits to the ABC Kids Expo is meals at odd times of the day. This year marks no exception to that. Today, we started with salad at 10 a.m., then moved on to lunch at 3. In between times, we fortified ourselves on little candies that benevolent manufacturers leave on their booths.
Once again, the CSFTL ABC Kids Expo contingent has descended upon the otherwise calm town of Las Vegas. Watch out, nickel slots, we’re coming for you! In addition to our high stakes gambling adventures, we’re headed back into the Convention Center for this year’s Expo. Here are a few highlights of our first day on the show floor.
The latest budget-friendly convertible car seat from Evenflo checks in at a VERY reasonable price of $79.99! It’s not often that we throw around the term game changer but at this price, it’s hard not to start thinking about the Sonus that way. Let’s see if the seat matches our expectations.
We’ve got 3 exciting giveaways for CPS Week 2016. Before the week ends, here’s your chance to enter all of the contests at once!
Evenflo’s newest mutlimode car seat boasts an exciting new feature: it’s the first seat to be rollover tested. We had a chance to meet the SafeMax in a super secret booth during our visit to the Evenflo area at the ABC Kids Expo this fall so we were eager to spend some quality time with a SafeMax of our own!
The BubbleBum has been a favorite CSFTL carpool option since the first days of our existence. Our 2013 review put the older version of this portable, inflatable, backless booster through the paces. Since then, the belt guides have been redesigned so we thought now was a good time to take a look at this updated seat.
