Bolton MP Raises Children’s Car Seat Safety Concerns

A BOLTON MP has contacted the Department of Transport about the lack of testing that child car seats need to go through before they can be sold in the UK.

Yasmin Qureshi, MP for Bolton South East, raised the issue after being contacted by a concerned mother.

Car seats only need to pass a frontal-collision test at 30mph, they do not need to be tested in side or rear collisions or above 30mph.

Ms Qureshi urged Andrew Jones MP, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport, to increase the rigorousness of these tests, including raising the legal test standard above 30mph, and testing side and rear collisions, as well as frontal collisions.

Both Which? and the Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club (ADAC) have found that some car seats that are being sold in the UK do not pass tests at 40 mph, let alone 70 mph.

An example of this is the Nuna Rebl i-Size car seat which Which? tested at 40mph in a frontal-collision with the seat in a rearward facing position.

The ADAC filmed one of their 40 mph test:

The result was that the seat was not capable of withstanding the forces of the crash, the metal frame of the car seat base broke, and the risk of injury was deemed ‘very high’ as the child car seat could potentially crash into the passenger seat in front.

Which? concluded that customers should not buy the Nuna Rebl i-Size because of the risk to safety, but Nuna has said that they will continue to sell the car seat, because it passes the 30 mph legal test.

Ms Qureshi said: “There are parents who will be living with a false sense of security, not knowing how dangerous car seats could be at high speeds.

“Parents in my constituency, and across the country, want to know that they can rely on car seats to keep their children safe.

“It is clear that car seats need to be more rigorously tested, including being tested at higher speeds and with side and rear collisions, not just frontal-collisions.

“I hope that the government will respond to the concerns surrounding car seat testing and take action to safeguard this country’s children.”