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Insurance Institute Gives Good Reviews of Car Booster Seats

A new review from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) found that car booster seat makers have improved in their efforts to ensure a proper fit for children in the back seat. According to the review, 21 out of 72 booster seats evaluated for properly restraining children have received top marks. This is an improvement over the nine out of 60 seats that received good reviews last year.

How the Seats Were Reviewed

The institute reviewed booster seats for children between the ages of 4 and 8 by how well they were able to elevate the children so that seat belts could fit them better. The seat belt is meant to route across the child’s upper thigh and across the middle of the shoulder to provide the best protection in a crash.

The idea is to make sure each seat did its job consistently among different children and in various types of vehicles.

The Best Booster Seats

Among the seats there were marked as best bets were:

  • Britax Frontier
  • Chicco Keyfit Strada
  • Clek Oobr
  • Cosco Juvenile Pronto
  • Cybex Solution X-Fix
  • Eddie Bauer Auto Booster
  • Evenflo Big Kid Amp
  • Evenflo Maestro
  • Graco TurboBooster Crawford
  • Harmony Baby Armor
  • Harmony Dreamtime (dual backless and dual highback)

Others that were listed among the best include Harmony Secure Comfort Deluxe, Harmony Youth Booster Seat, Maxi-Cosi Rodi XR, Recaro ProBOOSTER, Recaro ProSPORT, Recaro Vivo, Recaro Young Sport, Safety 1st Boost Air Protect and First Years Pathway B570.

The Worst Booster Seats

The booster seats that were among those not recommended included:

  • Eddie Bauer Deluxe
  • Eddie Bauer Deluxe 3-in-1
  • Evenflo Express
  • Evenflo Generation 65
  • Evenflo Sightseer
  • Safety 1st All-in-One
  • Safety 1st Alpha Omega Elite
  • Harmony Baby Armor

The reason these booster seats failed testing was because engineers found that they provided poor belt fit (the lap belt came too high on the child’s stomach or the shoulder belt was too close to the child’s neck).

While constantly finding ways to make your vehicle safer on the road could help lower your long-term auto insurance rates, finding ways to make your vehicle safer for your little ones will improve your state of mind while driving as you eliminate the nagging fear that they won’t be secure in an accident.

As you’re choosing booster seats, be sure to keep the IIHS top safety picks in mind to make sure your children have safe excursions every time you get behind the wheel.

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 10th, 2010 and is filed under Auto Insurance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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