Spending money on items such as a new car seat for your child might not be an attractive proposition in the aftermath of a car crash. Even minor collisions can prove expensive, so you may want to limit your expenditures at this time.
You may, therefore, be wondering whether it is safe to continue using the same car seat for them, or whether you need to find a new one.
What the safety experts say
According to the National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA), moderate or severe crashes always warrant replacing children’s car seats. The risks are simply too great not to.
Minor crashes, however, do not necessarily require you to replace the seats. How do you define a minor crash? NHTSA defines it as a crash where all of the following five points are true:
- You or someone else could drive the car away from the collision.
- No damage occurred to the door closest to the seat.
- Nobody inside the car was injured.
- No airbags in the vehicle deployed.
- The child seat is not visibly damaged.
The important thing to remember is that not all damage may be visible. A car seat that looks fine could, in fact, be catastrophically weakened and may provide little to no protection if you were to have another collision. It’s not possible to tell just by appearance.
The only guaranteed safe option is to replace the seat. If the crash was someone else’s fault, then learning how to claim adequate compensation can facilitate this, as well as covering many of the other more expensive costs that may result.