Car Seats

Car seats, like seatbelts, are designed to protect individuals not yet large enough for regular seatbelts from the devastating effects of car accidents. Unfortunately, these devices don’t work a lot of the time. The main reason the car seats don’t perform their job properly is because they are not installed correctly.

While many people think it is easy to install a car seat correctly, many people have an unspeakable amount of difficulty doing so. This is, frequently, not the fault of the individual attempting to install the car seat so much as the fault of the manufacturer for not providing adequate, easy to read, and easy to understand installation instructions. If a person cannot install a car seat adequately, it does not matter how well the car seat held up in crash tests performed by the company; it will not work.

Another reason car seats don’t perform their job adequately is because they are too old. Many individuals do not want to buy another car seat if they still have their original. Unfortunately, if there is a large gap between the last two children, the car seat’s plastic may have gotten brittle with age. For this reason, car seats now have expiration dates.

Other parents opt to buy a used car seat from a friend or at a garage sale. While this may be an effective way of saving money, it can prove deadly to the child. If an individual buys a car seat from a garage sale, they may not know if the car seat had ever been in an accident. If they know the car seat had been in an accident, they may not know how serious the car accident was. This can lead to cracked plastic in the car seat which would render the car seat less effective in the event of a future accident.

If your baby has been injured in an accident due to a defective car seat, contact Habush, Habush, & Rottier at 1-800-275-1729 to discuss your case and to determine your legal options.