Why are car seats considered outdated after 3 years?
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at
10:33 am
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Expiration date
In the last few years, CR manufacturers have been putting "expiration dates" on their products. This was begun in response to infant deaths from air bags. The companies realized that they had millions of products in use that said nothing about the danger to a rear-facing child. The concern became one that "best practice" and regulations change over time, so that a child restraint becomes "obsolete" and less effective than a new product, much the same way that medicines may change or become less effective after some time has passed. A current example would be with tethers–older CRs do not have them, and this is potentially a situation where a newer product will be more effective than an older one.
Taken at face value, the expiration interval (ranging from 5 to 8 years, depending on the manufacturer) is from the date of manufacture, which is what governs the labeling, certification, and other rules that apply. Whether to continue to use an "expired" CR is a judgment call, depending on the alternatives. It will work as well as before, but it is important to know what regulations and warnings may have changed and the risks involved. It is also important to take the expiration date into account when purchasing a CR that may have been manufactured several months or even a year or more before.
Corporate-funded studies that tell you to buy a new seat.
Planned obsolescence. If car seats were not outdated on a regular basis, then there would be little need to buy a new one. There is a chance that new tests have actually concluded it is unsafe, but technically, it is as safe as it was the first 3 years, but they must have tweaked requirements. If you are concerned, buy a new one.
Because of how much bigger the child has grown in that time. Car seats are designed for specific height/weight ranges, and one a child passes out of that range, then that seat is no longer safe. It may fail to function properly and cause harm to the child.
Think of a parachute. One is designed for someone who is 50-100 lbs., and when you weighed that it worked great, but when you grew up and became 150 lbs. would you still want to use a parachute that was only designed to work at 100 lbs.? Not me.
Because they outgrow them in that amount of time.
The easy answer is that your child will outgrow the seat in three years. Child seats are rated by weight, i.e. will will restrain a child under 20, 40, or 60 lbs. Check the label/instruction manual for your seat to find its weight limit. If you have any doubt, check with your local police/sheriff/highway patrol office.
Go to http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/ for more information.
The hospital just told us that we could not take our new baby home in the car seat we brought. They said it was outdated, yet out 2 year old just got out of it (she is small for her age). This sounds like balony to me. Anyone else think so?