WASHINGTON —- A lot of child seats aren’t installed properly. Now a survey finds that there’s a reason for that.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety evaluated the LATCH (Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children) hardware of 100 vehicles, and only rated three as being easy to use, while more than half are rated poor or marginal.
It’s an important distinction: Child restraints with LATCH hardware are more likely to be installed correctly than those without, the IIHS says, and that can save lives.
“LATCH is meant to simplify child seat installations, but it doesn’t always succeed,” says Jessica Jermakian, an IIHS senior research scientist.
“Parents often struggle to locate the anchors in the vehicle or find it’s difficult to attach the seats to them. We believe fixing these problems will make the task less frustrating for parents and increase the likelihood that children will ride in properly installed seats.”
The three easy vehicles are the BMW 5 series, the Mercedes-Benz GL Class and the Volkswagen Passat. One of the 10 that rated poorly is the Toyota Sienna — possibly unnerving, since as a minivan it can be expected to be hauling kids on a regular basis.
See the full list, and the IIHS criteria.
