So just what is the current best booster seat? Here, we look at the latest ratings for safety, functionality and fit and tell you the winner plus some close runners-up.
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety evaluated a number of booster seats for quality of belt-fit. All the booster seats passed normal safety checks, but the emphasis for the IIHS was to identify those booster seats with the best quality of belt-fit. In the event of a crash, the booster seat isn’t responsible for restraining your child – that’s the job of the cars fitted safety belt. The booster seat’s primary role is to re-route a belt designed for a typical adult so that it provides maximum safety for a typical booster seat child.
Best Booster Seat Assessment by IIHS
Researchers at IIHS (www.iihs.org) assessed 72 boosters, with 21 achieving the accolade of best bet booster seat.
The ideal booster seat reroutes the adult safety belt so that it goes flat over uyour child’s upper thighs, with shoulder positioning at mid shoulder.
The winning twenty one best booster seats are listed below. Any one of these would provide an excellent choice of seat for your child – but you must always assess the seat with your own child and satisfy yourself that the belts fit your child in the text-book style:
Belt across lap, not abdomen, upper crossing shoulder not neck.
Children aged between four and eight who ride in booster seats are 45 percent less likely to sustain injuries in crashes than kids only restrained by adult safety belts.
If your childs current booster seat does not route the belts correctly – you should seriously consider buying one the following best booster seats:
Britax Frontier 85
Chicco Keyfit Strada
Clek Oobr
Cosco Juvenile Pronto
Cybex Solution X-Fix
Eddie Bauer Auto Booster
Evenflo Big Kid Amp
Evenflo Maestro
Graco TurboBooster Crawford
Harmony Baby Armor
Harmony Dreamtime
Harmony Dreamtime (dual highback)
Harmony Secure Comfort Deluxe
Harmony Youth Booster Seat
Maxi-Cosi Rodi XR
Recaro ProBOOSTER
Recaro ProSPORT
Recaro Vivo
Recaro Young Sport
Safety 1st Boost Air Protect
(dual highback)
The First Years Pathway B570
The manufacturers with the most booster seats in the list are Harmony and Recaro. Note that a number of backless seats made the best booster seat list – the IHHS judged these to be equally adept as the best highback booster seats at routing belts fore and aft, but you should be aware that Which magazine in the UK is currently mounting a campaign to have backless booster seats banned as they feel they perform much more poorly in crashes. The IHHS tests were based on quality of belt-fit rather than crash-tests, so this discrepancy is perhaps to be expected.