Published: October 02, 2008 10:13 am         

Booster seats

Some of them are downright dangerous

Car booster seats are a front-line defense in keeping kids safe. Unfortunately, not all of the seats do the job — and consumers Wednesday were given a list of 13 seats to avoid.

Booster seats are meant to elevate children so that safety belts designed for adults are in the right position to restrain kids during a crash.

In a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety and the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute, researchers found that 13 of 41-belt positioning booster seats did such a poor job of improving the fit of lap and shoulder belts for children that that institute does not recommend them at all.

The 13 booster seats on the not recommended list are:

Compass B505, Compass B510, Cosco/Dorel Traveler, Evenflo Big Kid Confidence, Safety Angel Ride Ryte, Cosco/Dorel Alpha Omega, Cosco/Dorel (Eddie Bauer) Summit, Cosco Highback Booster, Dorel/Safety 1st (Eddie Bauer) Prospect, Evenflo Chase Comfort Touch, Evenflo Generations, Graco CarGo Zephyr, and Safety 1st/Dorel Intera.

But there are good booster seats. The IIHS called 10 seats “best bets,” meaning they were most likely to correctly position seat belts. They include: Combi Kobuk, Fisher-Price Safe Voyage (with plastic clip), Graco TurboBooster, Britax Monarch, Britax Parkway, Fisher-Price Safe Voyage (highback), LaRoche Bros. Teddy Bear, Recaro Young Style, Volvo booster cushion and Safeguard Go when it’s used as a backless booster.

Five seats were named “good bets” to provide acceptable belt fit. They include: highbacks Combi Kobuk, Graco TurboBooster and Safety Angel Ride Ryte, and combinations Recaro Young Sport and Safety 1st/Dorel Apex 65, when used as highbacks.

But another word of caution came from Dr. Kristy Arbogast, who researches child passenger safety issues at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She said parents should not interpret the evaluations to mean that poorly rated seats are not effective. “The biggest disservice this would do is to encourage people to move out of booster seats because we know they’re an effective restraint, we know they reduce the risk of injury and the risk of fatality,” Arbogast said.