Over the last year, we have received tremendous feedback from parents about our post on expiration dates. It is our hope that the attention brought to the
subject by NBC and others has resulted in safer
children.
Less often, but with great concern, we receive emails from parents questioning the validity of the statements we, Safe Kids, NHTSA, Manufactures, AAP and others make about the reasons for expiration dates. Last night, we received a great comment on the blog that has compelled us to respond formally. Below you’ll find the comment by Tom, followed by some answers to his and others’ questions...
“There’s been such hysteria surrounding children’s car seats, and I think it’s a continued regression of parents into a state of learned helplessness. In the past there were so many problems with installation. People were totally incompetent at following instructions and performing the checks of installation. Now it’s the expiration issue. Britax says: After six years, technology has changed, components degrade from the environment (depending on how and where stored), parts get lost or installed incorrectly, or instructions and labels may not be available or not legible. Expiring because a label is not legible? Or because you are installing it improperly Components degrading is really the only condition a consumer has some difficulty discerning. However, are you throwing out all the other weak links in the chain? Your car’s seat belt, while certainly thicker, but not expirable? How do you now? They are wound up most of the time, can’t be good. Is the belt’s mechanism being checked too? How about the safety features over-all of the vehicle? You have to use common sense most of all. A thick child seat like the Britax Elite is so sturdy, and when inspections reveal straps are not damaged or frayed, does expiration make sense just because of a manufactured date? Frequent inspections are needed throughout the use of anything safety related. Something just doesn’t seem right about this recommendation.”
We agree. Parenting has turned into a heightened culture of fear. Most frustrating for car seat technicians is that car seat installation is something parents can control, but rarely do.
Incorrect car seat installation has not gone away; most car seats are NOT used properly. Instruction manuals are confusing, rules change often and new parents are born every day. The challenges you found when starting out as a parent are brand new problems for the newbies.
Expiration dates are getting a lot of press, but they are not new. In the last decade car seats have been evolving at a rapid pace. Technology is changing daily and more changes are coming. Many parents fail to take a closer look at the seat they have been using everyday for years. Taking a closer look is important.
The following is a list of responses to your points:
Vehicle Safety Systems:
Every safety feature is subject to failure or damage. We often find seat belt buckles broken. As part of Safety Squad’s home service, we check for vehicle safety recalls before we work with clients. We often find LATCH, Seat belt and airbag recalls.
Stickers:
Missing stickers may seem petty. The fact is that some stickers are more important than others. The one we always look for is the model number. If you don’t know the model, serial numbers and manufacture dates you can’t check for recalls or get replacement parts.
The following excerpts are from a previous forum post on car-seat.org regarding some of the issues you addressed:
Plastics degrade:
“Take a piece of straight plastic. Bend it slightly one way, then the other. Repeat a few dozen times. No, the plastic hasn’t degraded into basic elements. It has been stressed and weakened considerably, to the point it can no longer hold anywhere near the load it could before. The same applies to metals. This stress can also happen very slowly over years due to the tension from belts/harnesses, vibration and thousands of signifcant temperature cycles (ranging from below zero to well over 100 degrees). Parts are lost or broken: or irreplaceable.
Clearly, the plastic used in a child restraint doesn’t disintegrate right at 6 years. It still can degenerate very gradually over time, especially if the item has been stressed from a crash or other unusual circumstances. Materials fail. Physical stress and temperature cycles are typical causes and it is no different for child seats than it is for a car piston or computer processor. The expiration date of 6 years is certainly a conservative limit, but it is not completely meaningless. Food doesn’t magically go bad exactly on the expiration date, either, but if you let it go on for too long it spoils.
Incidentally, I have discussed this very topic with child restraint engineers who have designed these products. They are indeed concerned about degradation and do lifetime tests for vibration, stress and temperature to insure that the critical parts will meet the expiration limits. Yes, they may last beyond those limits, but like many products, you’re using them at your own risk beyond the manufacturer’s recommendations.”
Seat belts:
“The fabric in a seatbelt can be stressed to failure, just like any material used to manage energy. Fortunately, fabrics for this purpose tend to be a more resilient than hard plastics to temperature and flexation/vibration. Kevlar is a great example, too. It has uses far beyond what metals or plastics can do to manage certain types of energy. A timing belt in a car has an expected lifetime. They don’t fail exactly at 80,000 miles (or whatever), but the risk of a failure increases the longer you go beyond that limit. If you make it to 160,000 miles, you consider yourself lucky. If the seatbelt doesn’t have a separate lifespan listed in the owner’s manual, then hopefully it is designed to last the life of the vehicle if there are no unexpected stresses or failures. That doesn’t mean there is zero risk of failure. Fabrics may resist flexation and temperatures, but they are not immune from wear. They can fray due to friction, are more suceptible to cuts and can be weakened by chemicals like beverages, detergents, etc.
Some seatbelt retractors use pyrotechnics in pre-tensioners. Others use fabric stiching designed to break at a certain tension as a force limiter. These features are one-use only. The parts in a standard, mechanically locking retractor can break under high stress. I’ve seen a number of them stuck or broken at child seat inspections and the owner didn’t even realize it. You should definitely have a seatbelt inspected if it was used in a severe crash or it may not protect you the next time. A good dealer or authorized repair shop should know when this applies; mostly to newer vehicles in the last 10 years or so.”
We wish that most parents cared enough to question the issues, like you, but the reality is that most do not. Expiration dates are in place to both get potentially bad seats off the street, but also to keep those parents from using seats indefinitely. Parents often think expiration dates are a marketing scam. We might agree, except the evidence on the street indicates strongly that we need them.
We appreciate your comment and look forward to addressing future comments.
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