Evenflo, Maker of the “Big Kid” Booster Seat, Put Profits Over Child Safety propublica.org/article/evenfl…
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration effectively devolved car-seat safety testing to manufacturers, leaving them to self-regulate.
Evenflo claims its competitors played fast and loose so it had to, too, to remain competitive
Evenflo claims its competitors played fast and loose so it had to, too, to remain competitive
They added "Side-Impact Tested" tags to their products, though when they actually side-impact tested the seats, the child-sized crash-test dummies suffered likely fatal injuries. ("We tested it, though!") 
In the real world, children in side-impact collisions in these seats suffered "internal decapitations" and will spend the rest of their lives paralysed.
Internal whistle-blowers sounded several alarms, but top execs (still serving!) overrode them
Internal whistle-blowers sounded several alarms, but top execs (still serving!) overrode them
Internal comms from the company show that they knew that parents implicitly trusted products to be safe because they believed it would be illegal to sell an unsafe one, and so marketed larded on promises and claims that they knew to be false.
They even added cosmetic "side bumpers" to the seat that were meant to mimic competitors' products that sold on the basis of side-impact protection ("increased perceived side protection"), and didn't tell anyone that the tests showed them to be useless
In Canada, Evenflo has faced a string of recalls, cannot claim that their seats work for smaller kids, and their products are sold with warnings of "SERIOUS INJURY or DEATH" if used in ways that US parents are told is safe
In a darkly hilarious twist, the side-impact tests that Evenflo's products failed were incredibly mild, "conducted on a bench resembling a vehicle’s seat that moves at 20 miles per hour and is suddenly decelerated" with no impact involved
By contrast, actual fed side-impact tests involve "a 3,015-pound barrier moving at 38.5 miles per hour smash[ing] into a vehicle. Another federal test involves a car pulled sideways at 20 miles per hour into a stationary pole."
