Of all the products in the world, child safety seats should be governed by the same safety regulations (or more, not less) than the average product sold. Incredibly, however, our own National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) almost exempted child booster seats from all state product safety laws. On August 5, 2008 NHTSA issued a ruling that children riding in booster seats will be protected by state product safety laws and federal safety regulations. The Federal safety regulations cannot adequately protect children, and product safety laws are designed to fill the void when manufacturers create dangerous child safety seats yet still technically comply with the Federal regulations. A manufacturer should not be able to sell and profit from a known defective safety seat that hurts or kills kids just because of a technicality allowing the defective child car seat to meet the regulations but still is actually a dangerous hazard.
This writer has been involved in litigation over a horribly dangerous safety seat that was marketed and sold with known dangers when used exactly as intended and instructed and that met Federal Standards. Thankfully, state laws fill the gap and protect innocent consumers when manufacturers circumvent but technically comply with Federal Safety Regulations.
