How to check car seat safety ratings?

[CatsBooksAndRain]

Hello!
I'm expecting my first baby in early August and still looking for car seats and prams/travel systems. 😵

When it comes to car seats, everyone says to check safety ratings, but where do I find those? Don't want to trust on the seller's information for this.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

If you're on Facebook there's a group called Car Seat Advice U.K. which has a wealth of helpful information and advice.

The most comprehensive safety test is the Swedish Plus Test but not all seats will have been tested. You can also look at ADAC which is a German organisation - I have looked up test results and used Google translate - or if you join Which they use the ADAC tests. Note though that ADAC does not just score for safety, they also score for things like ease of fitting so they can mark down very safe seats if they're tricky to fit.

As a general rule, for an infant car seat you can't go too wrong if you stick with a reputable brand like Britax, Joie, Maxi Cosi etc.

For the first seats they are all pretty good so don't worry too much :) it's the next stage you'll want to do your research as they range all the way from brilliant to absolute crap. But even the cheap no name infant carriers tend to do well in safety testing. You could look at ones that have extra side impact protection or padding that flattens the curve of the seat for newborns if you wanted something extra. You can find out this kind of information by going to a local shop and looking at them. Even better if you have a local independent baby specialist. You can often find those by looking at a baby stuff brand like Britax or bugaboo or maxi Cosi and clicking on stockists on their website to see if there are any non chain names on there.

If you do want to compare the crash test ratings and other features you could look at Which - this is pretty good for comparing between the different infant carriers and they do have safety ratings. It's behind a paywall though, so a free option is to look at the ADAC website, which is the organisation that does all the testing in the first place and then sells the results to Which and the equivalent of those magazines in other countries. The only problem is that on ADAC it's in German, but your browser can often translate for you. They release tests twice a year in may and October and this year's spring ones have just come out. Google "ADAC Kindersitztest".