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Safety Standards

At Britax, we are committed to improving child safety through research, testing, design and community advocacy. We engineer all our products to meet U.S. and Canadian Standards and make significant investments in advanced technology, research and development.


Our Proudest Safety Innovations:

SafeCell Technology in the car seat base acts as a crumple zone, absorbing crash energy to help keep it away from your baby.

Side Impact Protection: Britax car seats offer up to 3 layers of side impact protection, surrounding the head, neck, and torso. These layers include a deep, energy-absorbing shell, foam-lined headrest and side-impact cushions.

V-Shaped-Tether is designed with two attachment points to secure the seat and minimize side-to-side movement. It has rows of stitching that give-way one at a time during a crash to help slow forward movement.
 

We also test our products both in our own crash-test facilities and through independent parties.

 

Regulatory Agency Standards

At Britax, we are required to meet the following standards of regulatory agencies:

FMVSS 213 (Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards for Child Restraint Systems)

FMVSS 302 (Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards for Flammability of Interior Materials)

ASTM F 833 (Standard Consumer Safety Performance Specification for Carriages and Strollers)

CMVSS 213 (Canadian Motor Vehicle Safety Standards)


Keep in mind that we do conduct tests that are not yet required by regulatory agencies, such as side impact testing, and welcome any changes to current federal standards that work toward furthering child safety.

 

Chemical Compliance

Parents and caregivers can be assured that all Britax products comply with current and government regulations. The government standard referenced above, FMVSS 302, establishes a flame-retardant requirement for car seats, which is intended to prevent harm to occupants in the event of post-accident vehicle fires.

As of January 1, 2013, Britax requires its suppliers to eliminate certain chemical flame retardants containing bromine, chlorine or other halogens, from all components used in its car seats and all other products — while still ensuring their ability to pass federal government standards for flammability. Britax is pleased to report that all of its suppliers have confirmed they are compliant with Britax’s rigorous internal standards. Strollers do not have flammability standards. Therefore, Britax and BOB strollers are not treated with any chemical flame retardants.

Britax remains committed to working closely with our suppliers to ensure continued leadership in the area of chemical compliance specifications and to informing consumers of our progress.  In a recent report, the Ecology Center, (HealthyStuff.org), tested the chemical composition of leading car seats to discover the presence of harmful chemicals.

 

Development Tools & Tests

Some of the development tools that we use and tests that we conduct at Britax include:

Virtual Simulation

Virtual Simulation involves digitally created car seat models and anthropomorphic testing devices (ATDs or child crash-test dummies). Computer crash-test programs simulate the dynamic behavior of physical systems involved in a collision and assess the injuries sustained by the occupant. Before these virtual tests can be conducted, engineers create digital car seat models using anthropometric data, which help determine overall seat dimensions and harness slot heights and locations. The purpose of Virtual Simulation is to help engineers optimize design parameters before making physical models to test.
 

Dynamic Crash Tests

As required by FMVSS 213, car seats must meet certain specifications when subjected to frontal impact sled tests simulating crashes at 30 mph. FMVSS 213 requires a standardized seat assembly, which is representative of a vehicle seat, and ATDs that represent children of various sizes. The test results help engineers to establish compliance with the performance requirements as per the FMVSS 213 regulation.

The performance of the prototype seats is evaluated using two criteria:

  • Motion Limits
  • Acceleration Limits

Data obtained during these tests include:

  • Head and knee excursion
  • Head and chest accelerations

These crash tests are taped with high speed cameras (1000 frames per second) in order for engineers to carefully observe the results in slow motion.
 

Side Impact Testing

Currently, the US does not have federal regulatory standards for testing car seats for side-impact protection. In lieu of a federally regulated side impact testing standard, Britax has created a testing regime that simulates side impact crashes based on European test methods. Britax car seats are evaluated on how well they contain the head and minimize head, chest and pelvis acceleration.
 

Vibration Testing

Vibration Testing evaluates vibrations being transferred to the occupant through the car seat. The goal is to create a car seat that is just as comfortable as a vehicle seat for adults and minimize the amount of vibrations that are transferred through the seat belt system.
 

Pendulum Testing

Pendulum Testing is used to evaluate performance of individual components and as a quality inspection tool. The energy to which components are subjected during a pendulum test is correlated to the energy that the subject receives on a simulated crash sled test.
 

Component Testing

At Britax we realize the importance of each component of the seat and how they contribute to the protection that the seat provides for your child. In order to ensure that each component maintains its structural integrity throughout the life of your child seat we invest more than 150 hours testing individual components on each product. Tests conducted include: 

  • Static buckle and harness testing
  • Micro slip testing
  • Harness webbing strength testing
  • Buckle durability cycling
  • LATCH hook strength
  • Environmental testing – testing components in extreme environmental conditions including heat, cold and varying humidity levels
     

Market Research

Britax employs caregivers throughout the US to test products in real-life situations. The majority of market research is completed during the design process. We then continue postproduction market research in order to gauge how the product is received and learn more about the areas in which we can improve.