alt Hacker NewsI think this is very true. the general consensus from NCPS techs we've talked to is that the most likely fatal injury to a child is spinal - their heads are extremely heavy relative to the rest of their body in infancy so the 'safest' seats tend to be the ones that distribute kinetics away or absorb it (like rear-facing seats where the sudden 'stop' pushes into the seat rather than having the baby's head fly forward)
that said, I've also heard that the US standards for car seats is piss poor relative to the rest of the world's. something about how they only test one head-on crash at 35mph and then extrapolate all the data from there. Germany's ADAC is supposedly the gold standard and I can see why - their tests are intensely comprehensive and granular, in the way you'd actually want them to be, and many of the seats rated safe by American standards fail ADAC: https://www.besafe.com/en/safety-tips/tests-awards/adac/
if there were to be a plane-oriented solution, the last place I'd trust it to be taken forward is in the USA especially given how easily corruptible safety-oriented institutions are here
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The vast majority of the rest of the world simply doesn't use car seats at all. Even here in the US, in my very multinational city, I only see one demographic that consistently uses car seats at all, regardless of economic status.
> I've also heard that the US standards for car seats is piss poor relative to the rest of the world's
How do you define piss poor? The stats show that the US minimum standards still reduce fatal injury risks substantially. And your comparison point for 'rest of the world' is a German automobile club, not a government regulation. Would the better comparison be to ECE R129 for the EU?
> something about how they only test one head-on crash at 35mph and then extrapolate all the data from there
You know that the information is readily available and you could avoid spreading misinformation with a 10 second search, right?
The US regulation, FMVSS 213/213A, does a frontal crash at 30 mph as well as a side crash test at 30 mph. For apples-to-apples comparison, the EU regulation does a 31 mph frontal crash test and a 19 mph side test. All of the governmental tests are done on a standardized test bench. The German auto club test is 40 mph frontal and 31 mph side, done in a regular car.
There are also organizations in the US that do testing and ranking beyond the regulatory minimums.
I work in child car seat development and I can second that the main issue for our mechanical engineers is preventing neck injuries. Rearward-facing car seats really are a lot better on that front.
ADAC is indeed the main test, but even more difficult than getting a good ADAC score is passing the plus test[1], which focuses on neck spinal forces.
[1]: https://www.vti.se/en/services/laboratory-and-testing/crash-...