As a general rule, products sold separately from your child restraint should not be used because these products may affect the safety of your restraint in a crash. Even a seemingly minor change to your restraint could alter the way is designed and tested to perform in a crash, resulting in serious injury or death.
Are your car seat straps in the right spot? Remember, rear facing: at or below; forward facing: at or above!
*This seat has been discontinued and replaced with the much easier to use, Safety 1st Grow and Go*
The Alpha Omega Elite. Utter those words to any Child Passenger Safety technician and then just wait for the sigh of frustration and the exasperated look on their face.
Yesterday we posted the picture on the left on our Facebook page and asked you all to guess all of the misuses. You guys did great! Today, we’ve corrected everything for the photo on the right, which is an example of proper buckling.
To know if a car seat’s harness is tight enough, it must pass the pinch test. Try to pinch the webbing at the child’s collarbone as shown. If you can grasp any material and pinch it, it’s too loose. Your fingers should slide right off the webbing when it is tight enough.
The Graco TurboBooster is one of the most popular high back boosters for older kids – it’s inexpensive, and provides a great seat belt fit the majority of the time. It’s also host of one of the most common misuses we see as Child Passenger Safety Technicians – the elusive screws in the armrests.
Or more precisely, in the middle of the sternum. The retainer clip is designed to keep the straps parallel over the torso in a crash. Too low and the child could be ejected from the seat in a crash; too high and the child could suffer a neck injury. Line it up with the top of the child’s armpits, and it’ll be just right every time!
