The soon-to-be mother believed she had reason to worry. Consumer Reports had identified her Graco car seat among the worst to withstand collisions faster than 35 mph.
So she traded the seat for a safer model, this time buying a Graco SnugRide that ranked near the top of a Consumer Reports safety alert that has car seat manufacturers fuming and parents shopping.
Consumer Reports, a product watchdog, called on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) this week to toughen its standards. The magazine reported that 10 out of 12 popular car seats failed at speeds as low as 35 mph.
"Most failed disastrously," the report stated. "The car seats twisted violently or flew off their bases, in one case hurling a test dummy 30 feet across the lab."
The test is a first for the car seat industry. Instead of measuring the seats' performance against the NHTSA standard of a 30-mph front-end collision, Consumer Reports exposed them to the same tests afforded to new cars - a 35-mph frontal crash and 38-mph side collision.
The Graco SnugRide and Baby Trend Flex-Loc models survived the tests. Ten others fell short. The EvenFlo Discovery model failed to meet even the NHTSA standard, prompting Consumer Reports to advocate a recall.
"It never dawned on me that they would sell a car seat that wouldn't work," said Shan Neider, who learned of the results Friday while shopping for her second grandchild's car seat. She thought it was a cause for concern.
So did plenty of other shoppers at Babies ''R'' Us in Midvale who exchanged seats and purchased new ones in response to the study.
"We aren't going to take any chances," said Gary Green, a West Jordan man who plans to give his 4-month-old granddaughter a nearly $200 car seat and stroller that passed the Consumer Reports crash test.
The report has rankled car seat manufacturers, however, prompting scathing critiques of the watchdog's work.
"Anyone can create a test to fail a product," said Rick Locker, spokesman for the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association, which represents the leading makers of child restraints. "The question [is] how effective are these seats in preventing injury or death in the real world."
The Utah Department of Public Safety, although describing the Consumer Reports study as valuable, reported Friday that car seats have proved enormously effective for reducing injury and death.
Of the 5,400 Utah children younger than 5 involved in car crashes in 2004, 89 percent escaped injury in a car seat or some other child restraint, according to state data.
While car seats aren't perfect, they work more often than they don't, insisted Rhonda Parker, a child passenger safety instructor for the department. She said NHTSA studies have shown child seats to be 71 percent effective for averting serious injury.
"Car seats today are safe and effective if they are used correctly," she said.
Yet the Consumer Reports test reveals some startling weaknesses in child restraints that have people such as Mills shopping for a safer product. It also suggested that seat latches are less effective than safety belts for keeping car seats in place during a collision - a position state safety officials dispute.
The magazine's findings provoked a response from NHTSA Administrator Nicole Nason on Friday, stating that her agency is working to develop its own infant-seat tests for broadside crashes.
"We need to move faster," she said. In the meantime, she warned, "I do not want parents to be misled into thinking their children are safer in mommy's arms."
The Midvale Babies ''R'' Us store has offered to take back unused car seats in light of the magazine's report.
The Salt Lake-based reseller Kid to Kid reacted swiftly to the report's findings, advising its 51 stores to remove EvenFlo Discovery and Eddie Bauer Comfort seats - the products performing worst in the Consumer Reports study - from their inventories.
Outraged by the test results, EvenFlo officials issued a statement Friday condemning the magazine for using test practices that "conflict with the collective experience" of manufacturers and NHTSA. They assured consumers that their product "meets or exceeds" government standards.
Despite recent questions about car seat safety, Parker said the devices appear to be doing "what they were made to do" - saving lives.
Between 1992 and 2002, NHTSA found that 5 percent of infants - who are restrained in car seats 80 percent of the time - were hospitalized after a car crash.
The study found that hospitalizations rose among older children, ages 1 to 4, who are restrained just 40 percent of the time. Those children were hospitalized 33 percent of the time, NHTSA reported.
"There are a lot of people using car seats appropriately, especially for infants, and we don't want to get away from the focus that this is safe practice," said Janet Brooks, child advocacy manager for Primary Children's Medical Center.
Outside the Babies ''R'' Us store in Midvale, Mills and her husband fastened a new car seat in the back of their sedan. Mills said she will feel a little more comfortable bringing home her new baby boy, Kanyen.
"We feel good," she said. "We got one of the ones on the good list."
jstettler@sltrib.com
dawn@sltrib.com
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* THE NEW YORK TIMES contributed to this report.
How the Consumer Reports tests were conducted
* 30- and 35-mph front-impact tests, 38-mph side-impact tests
* Multiple units of each seat used, some with safety belts and some with LATCH attachments
* Collisions were designed to examine the effects of a crash on infant car seats inside a Ford Explorer, which crumples similarly to a Toyota Camry and some other sedans.
* Test dummies weighed maximum claimed weight for each seat
Source: Consumer Reports
Car seat dos & don'ts
* Read all instructions that come with the car seat.
* Call Primary Children's Medical Center at 801-662-2277 (CARS) for an appointment to have a car seat inspection or for referral to a trained technician.
* If possible, have an adult sit in the back seat to monitor the infant.
* Don't use the car seat in the home.
Source: Primary Children's Medical Center, Utah Highway Patrol
Parents-to-be, Adam and Tezsia Mills, load their new infant car seat in their car at Babies R Us.
Most of the infant car seats tested by Consumer Reports ''failed disastrously'' in crashes at speeds as low as 35 mph, the magazine reported Thursday.
The seats came off their bases or twisted in place, the report said. In one case, a test dummy was hurled 30 feet.
Of the 12 car seats tested, Consumer Reports said it could recommend only two, and it urged a federal recall of the poorest performing seat, the Evenflo Discovery.
Evenflo issued a statement disputing the tests' validity, saying, ''The magazine's test conditions and protocols appear to conflict with the collective experience of car seat manufacturers, NHTSA (the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) and the scientific community.''
To be sold in the United States, an infant seat must perform adequately in a 30 mph frontal crash, and Consumer Reports found that all but the Discovery did so. But it noted that NHTSA crash tests most cars at higher speeds - 35 mph for frontal crashes and 38 mph for side crashes - so the magazine tested the seats at those speeds.
''It's unconscionable that infant seats, which are designed to protect the most vulnerable children, aren't routinely tested the same as new cars,'' said Consumer Reports' Don Mays, a product safety director.
Ryan Galbraith The Salt Lake Tribune
