Terms & disclaimer

The short version. This site republishes public federal crash-test readings and shows you where each number came from. It is not a safety rating, it cannot tell you which car seat to buy, and it is not a substitute for federal recall notices. Every seat listed here passed the federal standard. If you want a seat recommendation, talk to a Child Passenger Safety Technician.

1. What this site is

Car Seat Test Data is an independent, non-commercial collation of publicly available compliance test reports published by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration under Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard No. 213. It reproduces readings — head injury criterion (HIC36), chest acceleration, head excursion, back-support angle — from those reports, and links every reading to the report it was taken from.

It is operated by one person, working in the open, with no funding from any manufacturer, retailer, advertiser, or government body.

2. What this site is not

• Not affiliated with NHTSA. NHTSA has not reviewed, approved, endorsed, or sponsored this site or anything on it. Nor has any manufacturer.
• Not a safety rating or ranking. Seats are listed alphabetically. Where the data cannot distinguish between seats, the site says so plainly rather than implying an order.
• Not a recall service. Recall status changes. Always check nhtsa.gov/recalls directly. The absence of a recall note here means nothing.
• Not a statement about products on sale today. A compliance test is a pass/fail check on one production sample, in one configuration, on one date, sometimes a decade ago. Designs and production change.
• Not advice. Nothing here is safety, medical, legal, or purchasing advice.

3. What the numbers mean, and do not mean

The readings come from a frontal sled test using instrumented crash-test dummies. They are not a child's probability of injury. The comparative figures on this site are derived using injury-risk curves published from adult research (Prasad & Mertz, SAE 851246; Eppinger et al., NHTSA 1999), applied to child-dummy readings. No pediatric injury-probability curve exists. The result is a relative index for comparing seats within a group, and nothing more.

Test measurements carry real noise. The same seat tested twice can differ by more than two different seats differ from each other. The site publishes an uncertainty range on every seat and a signal figure for every group precisely so this is visible rather than hidden.

4. Accuracy, and the limits of it

The data was extracted from PDF reports by automated parsing, with manual checking of the highest-stakes claims. It is offered in good faith and believed accurate, but accuracy is not guaranteed. Errors of extraction, transcription, matching, and interpretation are possible, and some have already been found and documented.

The source reports themselves are not internally consistent. During verification I found reports whose summary omits a failure their own data sheets record, and at least one report whose printed measurement is within the limit while its verdict cell reads Fail. Where the record contradicts itself, this site shows you the source rather than picking a winner. See the corrections and verification record.

The authoritative source is always the NHTSA report itself, which is linked from every row. If this site and the federal report disagree, the report is right and this site is wrong.

5. Correction policy

Corrections are welcomed from anyone — parents, technicians, researchers, and manufacturers alike. Write to [email protected], ideally citing the report number.

• Reports of a factual error in a published reading are acknowledged within 5 working days.
• Claims about a specific named product are re-checked against the source report as a priority.
• If a claim about a named product cannot be substantiated from the public record, it is removed promptly, and the removal is logged on the corrections page rather than made silently.
• Every substantive correction is logged publicly with its date. Corrections are never made invisibly.

6. Limitation of liability

This site is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, or non-infringement.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the operator of this site shall not be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for any loss of profits, data, goodwill, or other intangible losses, arising out of or in connection with your access to, use of, or inability to use this site, or your reliance on any information published here — whether based in contract, tort, negligence, strict liability, or any other legal theory, and whether or not the operator was advised of the possibility of such damages.

You are responsible for your own decisions about child restraints. Choosing, fitting, and installing a car seat correctly is what protects a child, and this site cannot do any of those things for you.

7. Trade marks and fair use

Product and brand names are the trade marks of their respective owners and are used here solely to identify the products described in public federal test reports. Their use does not imply any affiliation with, sponsorship by, or endorsement from those owners.

The underlying compliance test reports are U.S. Government works in the public domain. The analysis, wording, and presentation on this site are the operator's own.

8. Changes

These terms may change. Material changes are noted on the corrections page with a date. Continued use after a change constitutes acceptance of it.