The Land of Ozz

We recently went through the task of rearranging car seats for our kids. Riley is moving into a booster and Josiah has out grown the infant car seat (carrier). We have a fairly nice Britax that we got when Riley was less than a year old. It is in good condition and has never been in a vehicle when an accident occurred. The seat is nearly six yeas old and I was wondering whether or not the seat is still usable despite its appearance. I have heard that car seats expire. Is this a true statement?

I probably would not have even given this a thought but rather let common sense dictate whether or not to replace a car seat. But, sometime last spring we had a fire rescue team at our church one Sunday afternoon doing inspections on the installation of our car seats for anyone who wanted to participate. Ours were all installed and being used correctly, but the technician did give me a little feedback that I found interesting. One of the things he told me was that Riley’s Britax seat was expired. “DO WHAT?,” was my reply. This guy proceeds to tell me that car seats expire after five years. Don’t get me wrong. I get the concept. These things are made of mostly plastic and plastics can become weak when it gets pushed and pulled on enough. The belts can become weak when they get enough acidic spit up, juices, and other foreign substances on them over the years. All that said, you would think that the manufacture would have this plastered all over the boxes that these things come in. After all, that would equate to a fresh sell ever five years. Anyway, I heard what the guy said and went on about my business since this just did not seem to make sense to me. How can you you pick a number and say that in X number of years a car seat will expire? In my opinion you can’t.

Here’s the thing about those expirations. There is currently no federal law requiring that child safety seats have an expiration date. I have also found no state laws referring specifically to expiration dates. If you find that a seat has an expiration on it, you are not likely to get put into jail for using it past its expiration date, but you should certainly contact the manufacture to make sure you understand why they put that date on the seat. A report from AAA says that you are required by most state laws to “use seats in accordance with manufacturer’s instructions.”

Yes, some seats have expiration dates on them? Why? The explanations vary. Maybe the seat nmaufactures are trying to ride the wave of fear created by the technicians who tell us that the seats to expire. Many “convertible” car seats are sold touting that they can be used for 5-35 lbs rear facing and from 20-50 lbs forward facing. Those seats would need to be replaced before one child outgrew them if they were to expire in five or six years. For instance, the average boy will reach 20 lbs between 8-9 months of age based on the CDC Clinical Growth Charts that most of our pediatricians use. That same average boy will reach 50 lbs at about 7 years of age. That means that the average male child would be required to get a new seat before reaching the maximum allowed weight for most convertible seats simply due to an expiration.

The bottom line is that opinions rather than facts seem to be driving the five or six year expiration dates. The expiration age varies depending on who you talk to. Some Child Passenger Safety Technicians claim to have been taught that seats expire after five or six years depending on who trained them. One organization that offers certification classes for these technicians says, “Make sure the safety seat is less than 10 years old (preferably less than five), the expiration date stamped on the plastic has not passed, and it has never been used in a crash.” Reference

This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 12:12 am and is filed under Family, Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.