CR Retracts Car Seat Story

[II kings 9:20]

Consumer's Reports retracted it's story regarding the recent infant seat crash test. NHTSA investigated their report and found that the tests were conducted at 70mph not the 35mph claimed by CR. These car seats performed well in NHTSA tests. CHOP (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia) studied accidents and found that the infant seats were the safest place to be and reported no failures of infant seats in real world crashes. Story

[jjs]

Ah, CR credibility....

[srt8danno]

Good ol’ CR made a mistake? Nah….can’t be. Let’s take those child seats and run them through 100 mph crashes and see what happens. Oh gee they didn’t stand up so well.

Just goes to show that they’re not always the definitive word that many believe them to be. Thanks Kings for the heads up!

[vvv90]

They're nothing but biased extortionists, and I LOVE to see them lose credibility.

[catchMEifUcan]

Watch out... your Samuri will flip at 35 MPH... or is it 70 MPH?

CMIUC

[Rambit]

They had both sides on CNN a couple of weeks ago. CR never did supply them with their results. Probably for good reason as it seems now.

Rambit

[jjs]

If they can't even get their facts straight on items they had in hand and tested, it should make everyone rethink their 'predicted reliability' lists among other information.

[FirstChrysler]

Not in any way condoning the CR tests, but:

What really upsets me is that these car seats failed at 70 mph. Sure, you go the speed limit and don't go faster than 55 mph. OK, but that's true only if you hit a stationary object. For the 35 mph standard, 2 cars would need to be going 17.5 mph each in a head on collision to hit the maximum speed. So 2 drivers doing 35 mph each in a head on collision would have the same impact speed as the original CR test: 70 mph. I see myself driving 35 mph more than I see myself driving 17.5 mph. Indeed, I hope I can safely avoid a collision when both cars are going 17.5 mph.

So for the next time someone crosses the median when you're driving 35 ... what's the name of the car seats that came close to passing?

[jjs]

Originally Posted by FirstChrysler

Not in any way condoning the CR tests, but:

What really upsets me is that these car seats failed at 70 mph. Sure, you go the speed limit and don't go faster than 55 mph. OK, but that's true only if you hit a stationary object. For the 35 mph standard, 2 cars would need to be going 17.5 mph each in a head on collision to hit the maximum speed. So 2 drivers doing 35 mph each in a head on collision would have the same impact speed as the original CR test: 70 mph. I see myself driving 35 mph more than I see myself driving 17.5 mph. Indeed, I hope I can safely avoid a collision when both cars are going 17.5 mph.

So for the next time someone crosses the median when you're driving 35 ... what's the name of the car seats that came close to passing?

I think you may want to revisit the pyhysics of head on collisions...

(among many web references---->)

PHYS-L archives -- July 1999 (#52)

[II kings 9:20]

Also keep in mind, standard crash tests are conducted at 35mph into a fixed non energy absorbing barrier which is equivalent to two cars hitting head on at at 35mph both absorbing energy (combined speed of 70mph). The IIHS offset test is conducted at 40mph.