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Used or New Child Safety Seats

Used Child Car Seats and Used Infant Car Seats: Should You Ever Consider One?

"Here, use our old car seat. We don't need it anymore." If you are expecting and you haven't heard this by now you probably will soon. Should you use that old child safety seat?

When we were expecting our first baby a friend from work gave us their old child car seat. By this time the child safety seat mantra had firmly established itself in my head -- don't get a used child safety seat, buy new.

Why does the industry, and government for that matter, say to always get a new child safety seat? Especially since perfectly good older ones sit in the closets, garages and basements of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of homes across the country?

Is It Just Marketing Hype?

Well, aside from the obvious fact that it is great for sales of child car seats, are there any good reasons for you to not use an older safety seat? Should you always get a new one?

Here are a few good reasons for avoiding used seats:

	You can't always tell if a used safety seat has been in an accident. It's difficult to tell if it has been damaged in a way that the seat would fail to protect a child if it were involved in another accident. Careful visual inspection might provide a clue but most of us do not know what to look for. Also, damage may not even be visible.
	Degeneration of Safety Seat Materials. Plastics weakened by age and stress are more likely to fail during even a minor accident. Despite what the plastics industry says, I find that most plastic consumer products do not last as long as they'd like us to believe.
	Discovery of Safety Defects After Product Sale. After a safety seat has been in use for some time it may turn out there was a design defect that renders the safety seat unsafe. These defective seats may have been recalled by the manufacturer, but many of these defective child car seats and infant car seats still remain at large. You just might receive one of these defective seats if you use that second hand safety seat. (Check resources at the end of this article on how to check for recalls)

So, there are good reasons to never get a used safety seat and always buy a new one. Of course, a new model safety seat may have safety defects. They just haven't been discovered yet. Buying new isn't 100% certain either.

Another reason, for manufacturers, is liability. No manufacturer wants to be sued because one of their products failed. By saying loud and clear in many different forms (through articles, government agencies, advertising and other forms) BUY A NEW SAFETY SEAT, DO NOT USE A USED SAFETY SEAT. The public, you and me, are being educated to the point that this is now common knowledge.

Would I Use a 2nd Hand Child Safety Seat?

Personally, I think I would never accept or buy a used child safety seat from anyone I didn't know well and wasn't in contact with on a regular basis. I would need to know the people well and be in contact with them frequently enough to know they had not been involved in an vehicle accident.

That way I would feel confident the seat had never been damaged. With anyone else, especially strangers, I have no way of knowing for sure if the seat had been involved in a vehicle accident. With close friends or family I'll know about an accident because I am in regular contact with them, it'll be part of their life and part of my life.

Finally, the used car seat would have to be one that I liked. I don't like a lot of the infant car seats on the market. Graco is one of my favorite. If I was offered one of those brands I didn't really like I wouldn't consider it. Also, the safety seat would have to be relatively new, say 5 years or so.

What happened with the used child car seat offered by my friend from work?

In the end we didn't use the child car seat given to us by my friend from work. I didn't know them well enough to know the history of the seat. Another reason was that it was too heavy, clunky and was an ugly color. Newer seats are much lighter and less clunky. This one was just too old.

Want to Know More?

	Find more about recalls, click here for Recall information.
	Wondering about your state's child safety seat laws? Click here for child safety seat law information.
	Learn about federal NHTSA tests and child safety seat ratings.

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