The car seat is an essential piece of child safety equipment. Here are some tips that will help you get the right one.
Having scanned the manual will ensure a better buying experience. Car eats can be attached using either the seat belt or the LATCH system (which stands for the Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children system, and which all new vehicles have). You can decide before buying which one you want to use and then look for a seat based on how you want to install it — belt or LATCH.
Each car seat owner’s manual details the weight and height specifications for that seat.
Also consider who’ll be sitting in the back seat. How many children do you have? How many are in car seats? Take back seat measurements before you go shopping and bring the measuring tape with you to the store to measure the base of the seats.
Make use of all the instructions you can — those in the instruction booklet (which should always be kept with the seat), and the diagrams on the seat itself — to have the best possible chance of installing the seat correctly.
If you’re going to install the safety seat with the car’s seat belt, you’ll do so using the safety seat’s belt path — it’s what will keep the seat secure.
The two-piece clips take some dexterity and ingenuity to unfasten. Without these, toddlers may be able to unbuckle and climb out of their seat by themselves.
All safety seat harnesses adjust, but you want to make sure the adjustments are easy to reach and simple to use. An improper harness adjustment makes the seat less effective in the event of a crash.
This one’s more about cleanliness than safety — but easy-to-clean is a virtue, too.