If you are in a collision where your child’s car seat suffers damage that you can see with your own eyes, you’ll likely have little hesitation in throwing it away. Yet child car seats can often survive a crash looking visibly fine. Does that mean they truly are?
Here is some guidance from the National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) on the matter.
5 things must be true to consider keeping a car seat after a wreck
The NHTSA says you should only ever consider continuing to use a seat that has been in a collision when every one of the following five criteria is met.
- It was possible to have driven the car away from the accident scene
- The door closest to where the seat was located suffered zero damage
- Everyone in the crash escaped injury
- No air bags deployed in the collision
- The seat has no visible damage whatsoever
Four out of five is not good enough; it has to be all five. In any other case, the seat should be replaced, and many parents opt to do this anyway.
What if you are not sure?
If you are not quite certain whether all of the criteria are true, you must err on the side of caution and replace the seat. Those recommendations might seem overly strict to some, but structural damage to these car seats often happens internally due to how they are designed. Something that looks fine could, in fact, be next to useless.
Being in one car crash does not negate the chance you will be in others. Another one could occur at any time, and if your child is in a seat that is already damaged, they won’t receive the protection they need. That’s too great a risk to take. Learning how to get the full amount of compensation due in crashes caused by others can help you cover these and other, potentially far more significant costs.