Some young adults fit better in the seat belt than their parents. My teenager is as tall as I am. As a short Child Passenger Safety Technician, I feel the pain of other short parents. We get questions about this often — “I’m an adult, I don’t pass the five step test. Do I need a booster seat?” The short answer is no, you don’t.
Recalls happen all the time. Recalls can happen for as many different reasons as there are variety of items that are recalled. When it comes to car seats, recalls can be anything from a typo on a required line on a sticker to an issue that makes a car seat completely unsafe or unusable.
It used to be that anti-rebound bars and load legs were common only in Canada and outside North America. But today these features are becoming more and more common for seats on the American market as well. In Canada, car seat manufacturers often employ the anti-rebound bar to meet Canada’s anti-rebound standards. But what exactly are these, and what do they do?
It’s amazing, but somehow that Little you just brought home for the first time yesterday is now not so much a Little, but is ready to be behind the wheel. It’s an exciting time. For the parent, it’s another set of wheels in the house to run errands and drive around younger siblings. For the teen, it means freedom.
Baby Jogger has issued a recall for their City Go rear facing only seats and bases, model numbers BJ64510, BJ64529, BJ80400 (base), BJ61500 (base), BJ72510 (travel system), BJ70411 (travel system), BJ70424 (travel system), and BJ70431 (travel system).
CSFTL is happy to review our first palindromic booster seat! Written the same forward as it is backwards, Aidia has released a new booster to the US market, the Explorer. This high back to backless booster has a logo at the top that looks very nearly the same in your rear view mirror as it does looking directly at it. It also sports a removable cupholder, is quite narrow, easy to adjust, is lightweight, and is comfortable.
The GB Asana has been on the market in the US for over a year now. But GoodBaby has made important updates to this rear facing only car seat, so it’s back in the hands of CSFTL for another review!
Baby Trend has revived another retired car seat. This time, the Compass Pathways B570 Booster has been redone and given another shot at life. When the Compass Pathways came out it was the latest in a line of folding high back boosters from Compass. Since then, Compass and Harmony have phased out their folding boosters. Safety 1st has stopped producing the BoostaPak. But now, Baby Trend has brought the PROtect Yumi to the market, a folding high back booster that’s great for travel or everyday use.
A baby shower is such a fabulous event! They’re often full of brightly colored products that promise to make those sleepless nights and exhausting days with a new baby easier. These products speak loudly to friends and family who look forward to welcoming a new baby.
Using the top tether in conjunction with installing a forward facing car seat is one of the easiest things a parent can do to help protect their children. It’s the law in Canada to use a tether for all forward facing seats, and has been since 1989; in Australia all seats have been tethered since the 1970s. And yet in the United States, where it’s been highly encouraged since 2000, tether use is often less than 50%, and in some types of vehicles it’s as low as 17.2% (Jermakian, 2011).
