More and more it seems that things are just not built to last any more. Even car seats. Most every parent has heard that car seats have expiration dates but very few understand why car seats expire.
Over and over again parents question the reason for car seat expiration dates. They wonder if manufacturers are just trying to sell more car seats. Of course, as parents, we want to keep our children as safe as possible and follow car seat best practices as best we can. That includes throwing out what seems like a perfectly good car seat.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) says:
“Manufacturers of newer child seats provide “expiration” dates for their seats that typically range from six to eight years from the date it was manufactured. Expiration dates are a way for manufacturers to provide consumers with guidance as to the expected “useful” life of their car seat.”
But Why do Car Seats expire?
There is actually a very good reason for car seat expiration dates.
Manufacturers Alliance Child Passenger Safety says components may degrade over time. Car seats are made from petroleum-based plastics. This material is excellent for producing a strong, reliable child restraint, but it is subject to degrade from environmental factors. Car seats sit in a car during freezing temperatures to super hot temperatures of 140 degrees or more. Overtime this can make the plastic brittle.
Some say plastics take forever to break down so how is this possible? Let me give you an unrelated example. I have acrylic glasses; acrylic is a type of plastic. After about 9 years of having the glasses, the arms had cracks in them. These aren’t my everyday glasses, and they haven’t been dropped or otherwise physically harmed. An eye glass technician told me acrylic glasses tend to become brittle after about 6 years.
Sun exposure can also cause damage to plastics and synthetic fabrics often used in car seats. There is research to backup damage from sun. It doesn’t refer specifically to how the plastic used in car seats might degrade when subjected to standard use in vehicles.
Whether or not car seat manufacturers age test their car seats is unknown. Car seat manufacturers tend to guard their data closely. Most won’t release crash test data either, claiming it is proprietary information. Whether they have or haven’t age tested car seats, knowing plastic does degrade over time, manufacturers may want to protect themselves from possible liability and perhaps keep expiration periods shorter than they may otherwise be just in case.
Food or drinks spilled on, or cleaning agents used on, or dirt gathered in webbing, buckles, adjusters and other parts may prevent them from working safely after some time. If the seat is installed and removed frequently or taken traveling, parts may become lost.
How does that affect the life of a car seat?
Degrading plastic can interfere with the performance of a car seat. The ability of the shell to maintain integrity and transfer crash energy to the seat belt or LATCH system could be compromised.
For instance, using a conventional 5-point harness car seat forward facing during a forward crash, the restraining forces are first experienced by the harness strap, then transferred to the shell of the car seat before being transferred to the seat belt or LATCH and finally to the car. If the plastic is degraded, the shell could potentially break during that transfer of energy.
Other reasons for car seats expiring
In addition to the materials aging, the standards could have changed since your car seat was manufactured. If the regulations change, an older car seat may no longer be in compliance. Often car seats can continue to be used to the end of their life. But if a car seat had no expiration date, it may allow you to continue using a car seat that is no longer as safe as the new standards require.
Even if federal standards haven’t been updated, car seat manufacturers are always trying to improve safety and ease of use. So newer car seats may be easier to install and have increased safety performance.
Recalls can affect the usability of a car seat. Usually if there is a recall on a car seat the manufacturer will notify the registered owner and send replacement parts. Very rarely, a car seat will be deemed unusable and the manufacturer will instruct you to discontinue use and destroy the seat.
Are manufacturers required to give an expiration date?
No. There is no government regulation that requires an expiration date on car seats in the United States. However, NHTSA does recommend expiration dates due to the possible changes in regulations over time. For instance, for the first 9 years, RideSafer vests did not have an expiration date. The manufacturer added an expiration date per NHTSA’s request in 2013.
Car seat manufacturers decide car seat expiration dates based on the expected useful life of their product. Most car seats expire after 6 to 7 years from the date of manufacturer. Note that is not the date of purchase; it could have sat on the store shelf for months or longer. RideSafer vests currently have a 10-year expiration date.
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Where to find the expiration date
All car seats must have a date of manufacturer on them. Most of the time this is on a sticker, often on the back of the shell. Sometimes the date is actually embossed on the shell of the car seat.
Some car seat manufacturers also add a date of expiration on the sticker. Others just have a length of time from the date of manufacture.
If you are buying a car seat secondhand, which we do not recommend, be sure to look for the expiration date. If it is past or coming up sooner than the length of time your child will need to use the seat, it’s not a good purchase. (Buying a used seat also has the risk that the car seat was in a crash that the owner didn’t reveal, the car seat is missing parts, or that some parts are worn out and not in good condition.)
Could I get in trouble for using an expired car seat?
It depends. NHTSA says there is no regulation prohibiting parents from using an expired car seat and most states don’t say anything about a car seat’s expiration in their laws.
But many states’ car seats laws do require a parent to use the car seat per the manufacturer’s instructions. If the manufacturer has an expiration date and you are using it beyond that date, you are not using the car seat per the manufacturer’s instructions. That would technically be illegal. But in all likelihood a police officer isn’t going to remove your car seat to check the date of manufacturer. Well, unless it’s very obviously an old seat and they are trained to look for it.
Is it ever OK to use an expired seat?
This is when car seat best practice and reality may not fit. In some situations the reality is a parent simply cannot afford a new car seat. In this case is using an expired seat better than not using a car seat at all? Quite possibly.
What do I do if a car seat is expired?
A car seat or booster seat that has expired should be permanently disposed of so it cannot be reused by any one else. Car seat technicians tell parents to “destroy” the car seat. This means cutting the harness straps and removing the padding prior to recycling the car seat or putting it in the trash.
By Amie Durocher, Creative Director at Safe Ride 4 Kids and certified CPS Tech since 2004
Copyright 2020 Safe Ride 4 Kids. All rights reserved. You may not publish, broadcast, rewrite or redistribute this material without permission. You are welcome to link to Safe Ride 4 Kids or share on social media.
Call any car seat manufacturer and ask them to provide you with any data or conducted study that supports why their expiration date is set to what it is. I’ll be waiting for your reply.
Or, show me any independent study, with actual, empirical data, that has provided any evidence that car seats are no longer effective beyond 6 years.
Have you ever seen one? I have not. Just the same blog posts and articles repeating the same nonsense over and over (in many cases, it’s almost verbatim).
On the contrary, studies have been performed that show there is no noticeable difference in the effectiveness of a well maintained car seat beyond its expiration date.
Look at Sweden, for example, where car seats are used for many, many years, and they have one of the lowest child car accident death rates in the world.
Their equivalent of the DOT has conducted studies showing no degradation of materials after 20 or even 30 years.
I get that technology changes – and that’s perhaps a legitimate reason for someone to want to invest in a newer car seat – but not a necessity. However, this constant fear-mongering that their well-maintained 6, 7, or 8 year old car seat is no longer safe due to “degradation of materials” or “inability to find replacement parts” (ummm, if I need a replacement part that I can no longer find, sure, I’ll buy a new one…. but why would my perfectly well-functioning car seat that has all of its parts now be rendered “expired” over the POSSIBILITY that I may need a new part at some indeterminate point in the future?), is an outright lie, and furthermore, not very environmentally friendly.
Hi Ryan, As I mentioned in the article, if they have completed testing, car seat manufacturers have not and likely will not share those results as it would be considered proprietary information. There is a link to a study that showed sunlight degrades the type of plastic often used in the article above.
Often Sweden is credited for having such a low child car accident death rate because all parents keep their children rear-facing for an extended period. I’ve never read or heard of it them using a car seat for years and years. Their car seat manufacturers also have expiration dates on car seats. As I also mentioned in the article it may be a tactic to avoid liability in case the materials degrade.
I could not find any studies done in Sweden indicating it’s OK to continue using car seats for 20-30 years. I did find one article that says they interviewed Professor Anders Kullgren of the Karolinska Institutet and the Chalmers University of Technology, as well as the longtime head of traffic safety research at Folksam, one of Sweden’s largest insurers. This article quotes him as saying, “We have not seen any changes or problems with the plastic material in those seats [used seats in storage] for this 20–30 year period of time.” Now that is not a study and it also does not indicate if they crash tested the seats after this period of time and if the seats held up to crash forces. It’s possible they look OK and would break on impact. If you have links to studies from Sweden or otherwise, please do share.
As an environmentally conscious parent on a budget, I agree expiration dates on car seats seems to be in place just to make the manufacturers more money and causes a lot of unnecessary garbage, especially if parents don’t recycle what they can of the car seat.
And as a certified child passenger safety technician, I have to tell parents car seats do expire and if you are using the car seat after the date of expiration and something goes wrong you will likely not be able to hold the manufacturer liable because you were not following the manufacturers requirements.
I have a couple car seats used when my grandchildren come to town. When the children are not here, I store the car seats in our house away from heat, cold, sun and humidity. For these reasons and the fact that the seats have not been in an accident, I see no reason why the seats cannot be used after their expiration date. I do not install them, but have my daughter do those honors. It is better for both of our peace of mind. The fact that there are not clear cut regulations is a strong indication that an expired seat that has been cared for and not in an accident, is perfectly fine to use when installed correctly.
Chalk this one up to planned obsolescence and our litigious society!
I completely agree, corporations will practically never take any safety precautions if they don’t have to, whether that be due to public outcry/loss of opinion, or legal requirement. This seems like someone saw an extremely easy way to plan obsolescence by exploiting parent’s fear.
Thank you, Amie, for replying to the critique. I think it’s important for there to be a critical approach and proper questioning. Yet it wouldn’t make much sense for the original article to be written in a loop of forever hypothetical doubts and responses to hypothetical doubts. So I appreciate your effort in engaging in the comment section and responding to doubts and critiques that way. Cheers
Thank you! :-)
The study about sunlight says those plastics degrade in decades or centuries rather than thousands of years…??
Which study?
I think he’s asking if the studies showing that car seat plastics degrade truly showed the degradation as happening in as little time as 10 years, or did it take longer? Often in studies we might hear of an effect being a problem and are led to believe it occurred in a much shorter time than actually occurred in the studies.
If that is the case, the study I referred to in the article only seems to discuss how sunlight degrades this type of plastic but it does not discuss a time frame for how long it takes. It does say, “The study also found that additives to polystyrene, which can determine its color, flexibility, and other physical features, play a major role in breakdown. ‘Different additives seem to absorb different frequencies of sunlight, which influences how fast the plastic breaks down,’ Reddy says.” So it sounds like timing can vary. Is it decades or centuries, I can’t say.
To really know, each car seat manufacturer would have to test each type of plastic they use. And again, even if they did do that, they probably wouldn’t share that information with the public as they would consider it “proprietary”, much like their car seat crash test results are “proprietary”.
I’ve seen other plastic objects degrade and crack or break over a matter of a few years so I can imagine it would eventually happen with plastics used in car seats too. Hmmm, maybe I should have put our old car seat outside and checked on it every few years for the next few decades as a not-very-scientific little test.
While I wouldn’t want to use the same car seat for 20 years, I tried to be the well prepared grandmother when my daughter was pregnant. I am a firm believer that one of the biggest failures involving car seats is the failure to install the base correctly. I bought a Chicco KeyFit 30 for each of my daughter and her husband’s cars and 1 for mine. My plan was to have them installed in each vehicle by a professional. There would be no need to shuffle them from car to car, just double-check.to.make.sure attachments were secure.
My grandson had other plans and was born 3 months early at just over a lb. After 21 months in the hospital, he was over the weight limit, so we purchased a different seat. I pulled the 3 original seats out of the boxes and they were expiring.in just a.few months. Super frustrating, as they had never been exposed to extreme heat or cold….they had never been used..
That is frustrating. And surprising that they were still available for sale on the shelf apparently so far into their 6-year expiration period.
How can a car seat manufacturer or stores be able to sell them when they will expire prior to the baby being ready for the next stage?
Stores likely do not know the expiration date of a seat on the shelf. The expiration date is on the seat not necessarily on the box. Stores sell what the manufacturer send them. Depending on how fast that particular seat sells in that particular store, it may be on the shelf a shorter or longer period of time than planned by the manufacturer. Most car seats are sold within the first few months to a year of being manufactured. Most seats have a 6-7 year time before the expiration date. Depending on the type of seat (ie. infant carrier versus all-in-one), most often a child will have outgrown the seat, moving to the next stage, prior to the seat expiring.
Just planned obsolescence.
Make more money and fill up landfills. Only an idiot would dream up this. Time for this to go away.
Perhaps. RideSafer vests went several years without having an expiration date before the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) asked the manufacturer to add expiration dates to the vests.
Barr plastics make non-degradable plastics that last for decades out in all weather. The seats are probably made with the same materials, and if they aren’t, THEY SHOULD BE. It’s just like the ludicrous fact that in this day and age, cell phones have such incredibly fragile screens. We all know why. So people have to keep buying new screens.
Going by their considerations, shouldn’t cars themselves expire? Maybe seats should have an inspection date.
Just what I was thinking.
How is the plastic used in car seats different from the plastic used in the cars themselves? They’re more plastic (by volume) than metal these days!
Also, why no mention of all the toxic VOC’s offgassing from all that plastic?
Those are very good questions that I do not have answers for and are not addressed in the safety recommendations by NHTSA or Safe Kids.
Very good question. Why not have an inspection, at appropriate locations; to extend the expiration date based on the inspection.
Ed
The car seat manufacturers and safety organizations say that you cannot always see damage in the plastic upon just a visual inspection. This is also the reason many manufacturers require car seats be replaced after any type of crash.
I have a car that is 9 years old, I’ve never heard of replacing them or the seat belt after six years. What about all the plastic and belts involved there, why would a car seat be any different??
Generally speaking the manufacturers are not worried about the webbing degrading over time. Most seat belt safety locking components are made of metal so there is also not a concern about degradation over time with those.
Hi!
So I am having my first baby in February and my boyfriend’s cousin just gave us a very gently used Graco Fast Action fold Click Connect carseat and travel system. She barely used it due to the fact that she lives in the city and does not use her car or go out much so she really didnt need it. She told us she used the carseat a handful of times and kept the seat and stroller stored in her home hoping someone close to her would have a baby that she could hand it down to. The manufacturer date is 10/24/2013, which would make it expired. I can tell the carseat is barely used and the stroller looks and feels very gently used. I am wary of using this for my baby due to the expiration date, but I would also hate to throw this away as it has gotten such little use and we really cannot afford a brand new travel system. If you could please give me your opinon on whether or not I should use this I would greatly appreciate it!
Thank you
Hi Nicole, I would have to recommend against it because it is expired. While, as far as I know, it hasn’t been proven one way or the other with crash tests, manufacturers still say the plastic could degrade over time with or without use, just the passage of time. Plus, I don’t know where you are located. Some state car seat laws say something along the lines of using the seat “according to the manufacturer’s instructions” which means it would be illegal to use an expired car seat in those states.
Hey Nicole! If you’re not going to use it, I’ll take it! The one I’ve been using for my three kiddos expired in 2015. Sorry Amie, I think the expiration date thing is bunk and we gotta stop drinking the kool-aid just because the “evidence” (What evidence…?) from the sellers (…uh, major conflict of interest!) says so.
Use your brains, people. We live in a country where the CS rate is 1 in every 3. How did people have babies before the all the obstetricians were there to rescue us?! The world is literally out to get you.
That may be. Not being privy to manufacturer data, if there is any on the issue, I can’t say for sure. It’s not just the manufacturers. The RideSafer vest manufacturer didn’t have an expiration date on the first two versions of the vests but back in 2013 NHTSA urged them to add one even though the vests don’t contain plastic that may or may not break down in so many years.
This article says a lot – but effectively nothing. As mentioned before, I see no imperial data or evidence to prove that car seats automatically expire.
If in a crash – then it would make sense to say not to use it again (but again depends on the severity).
If regulations change, then yes – say you have certain time limit to keep on using it (eg 1 year past the regulation change).
Is there a recall on the car seat or not. You can’t define an expiration on the possibility that there may have been a recall on some seats.
Do the materials degrade? Maybe. After how long? No one knows. But the unknown can not define an expiration.
In my humble opinion, A car seat that is used and abused multiple times a day, every day, – for example carpool van; left in extreme temperatures; gunked up with spilt drinks, throw up, harsh chemical cleaners etc, is far less safe to use after 2 years of this abuse than a car seat gently used and cared for by grandparents, used a couple of times a year when grandchildren come to visit.
I have also not seen any distinction applied to a baby car seat, toddler seat or a booster seat. The first being most critical and the latter the least. Also, how old is the car they are installed into – most people change their cars a lot more often and modern cars are far safer nowadays than previously. Car seats we would hope would also be more safe nowadays than their predecessors.
Please provide data or evidence to prove that car seats automatically expire after certain time. Or how to test if a car seat is still safe.
While I can agree with you on some points, the fact remains that car seats do have an expiration.
Do the materials degrade you ask and answer maybe and after how long is unknown. You say an unknown cannot define an expiration date. However, it’s because of the unknown that there is an expiration date. Different car seats may degrade differently and manufacturers don’t know what conditions a car seat will be stored in so manufacturers can’t say “if it’s stored/used like this, this is the expiration or if it’s stored/used like that, that is the expiration.”
Also you mention how new cars have new safety features, and so should car seats. This is another reason NHTSA wants car seats to have an expiration date so people don’t use 20-year-old car seats that are not as safe as current car seats.
You can certainly crash test an old seat to see if it is still safe, but then it would no longer be safe because it’s now been in a crash. Crash testing car seats is very expensive and since NHTSA wants manufacturers to have an expiration date on child restraints anyway, we can assume it’s not worth it to the manufacturer to crash test old seats to see how they hold up after being aged for so many years.
As a NICU RN for 22 years and a CPST for 17 years, it astounds me that people with little to no education on the subject, insist on wanting to use an expired car seat on such precious cargo. You wouldn’t use expired formula/breastmilk would you, or expired medication? The only difference is that car seats that function properly(ie. not expired) are a life saving device that could make the difference in whether your child walks away from a car crash with little to no injuries or with life changing injuries that could have been prevented. If it’s expired, its done its job so dispose of it and buy a new one. If your child is injured because your car seat was expired, how would you explain that to friends and family that you didn’t want to spend the money on a new car seat.
How can you prove that a child was injured due to the car seat being expired? You can’t. I could purchase today the exact same car seat/carrier that I purchased 6+ years ago for my son. If you put them both through a crash test, I can pretty well guarantee that the older one would hold up the exact same. As far as I know the plastic mold could’ve been made on the same day with different dates stamped on them depending on when they were assembled with the rest of the parts.
Comparing expired food/medication to “expired” car seats is comparing apples and oranges and you know this.
And you’re supposed knowledge of being a NICU nurse makes you no more knowledgeable in automotive safety industry.
Such foolishness to get fools part with their money quickly.
Logically, if a car seat expires in 5-6 years due to the reasons stated, then a vehicle would be rendered unsafe and unfit to transport a child in when it’s also 5-6 years past its manufacture date. And we all know that is definitely not the case. Cars are updated way more frequently with safety features than car seats are.
I don’t care if my 8 year old car doesn’t have blind side monitoring /indicator system in it or a backup camera- it’s still perfectly safe to drive my child in.
I am old enough to remember when “safe” car seats — not those ‘cutie’ ones with a steering wheel for the child — were introduced. I think the original concept was that the car seat put the child at the correct/safe height to be restrained by the car’s seat belts — which were actually fairly new in all vehicles at that time.
Of course, we all want our children to be as safe as possible in our cars…but I think car seats have become a ‘cash cow’ for the manufacturers due to this ‘expiration’ stuff. (???)
I feel like no weight is given to whether the car seat has been used continuously for the period of 6 years. We happen to be having a 5-year gap between our children and thus have not used our infant seat in almost 3 years and it has been in our cool basement where there is no light that entire time. Shouldn’t all the concerns not count then? We aren’t using this 20 years later and the seat won’t even expire until our daughter is about 8 or 9 months old but we used this seat for 2 years (Chicco Fit2) So feel like we need to buy a new one which is extremely frustrating given that it basically had no exposure to any of the things that are quoted for 3 years.
You make a good point that I’m not sure an manufacturer has addressed publicly in regard to car seat expiration dates. I think for car seat manufacturers it’s easier to make a blanket expiration date regardless of the conditions because otherwise there would be too many variables to account for and it would be confusing for consumers.
Maybe a good idea would be for the car seat manufacturers to embark on a “buy back” scheme. Parents would return the seats to the manufacturer with a completed questionnaire of how the seat had been used. The parent then gets a percentage off of a new car seat and the old one can be used in crash test simulations to answer some much sought after questions.
Of course the questionnaire would have to be answered honestly but what parent wouldn’t want to be honest when it comes to the safety of their child? After all they are still getting money off of a new car seat regardless of how their seat performs and it takes a large cost out of doing the crash testing. These seats were heading to landfill regardless!
The trickiest part is getting the manufacture to publish the results.
Just a thought…
That would be a good idea. And true they probably wouldn’t make the results public. Though I think it could be good publicity for a brand, depending on the results of course.
Data on plastics:
https://www.layfieldgroup.com/geosynthetics/tech-notes/uv-resistance.aspx
My Quick takeaways from skimming:
Ultraviolet light has three types, UVA, UVB, UVC.
UVA: sunburns, blocked by glass
UVB: not blocked by glass, breaks down plastic.
UVC: earth’s ozone layer blocks it.
Opacity:
Plastic that is clear or see-through will be degraded by UVB throughout whereas plastic that is black and not see-through – like nearly all child car seats – will only degrade on the surface.
During plastic manufacture an inhibitor can be added to plastic to keep it from degrading due to UVB light.
Conclusion:
Only surface damage, not structural damage, can occur to the plastics used in child car seats that use plastics that specifically avoided including an inhibitor that protects plastic from being degraded by UVB light.
Concerned Parents have a right to know and therefore should ask all manufacturers, “Does the plastic you use contain an inhibitor to protect the plastic from UVB light?” And, “If not then why not??!”
Hi David, Interesting data. I’m curious, have you seen anything about temperature fluctuations affecting or not affecting the plastic? And did you send this to any car seat manufacturers for their response?
I think this should be sent to the media, they’ll get on it with tenacity!
It’s also ridiculous to negate the fact that a lot of car seats (notably the ones that do not adjust with child growth) are only used/installed for 1-2 years. So giving a hard expiration date of 6 years after manufacture date is complete BS. Okay, sun and freezing temperature can make plastic brittle, but if you pull it inside to store it 2/3 of that expiration time then it’s still got 4 years of life. The expiration needs to be “years of use” not “years after manufacturing”, if any at all. Just had a lady from craig’s list waste my time asking me to deliver a stroller/car seat combo to her house FOR FREE and not want it because she saw it would expire in one year, even though I only used the removable car seat for the first year. People use their car seats when their kids are young, fact. If you want a car seat that is not expired, you won’t get it used from craigs list for free, also fact. It’s not her fault though, this is industry is completely greedy and she fell for their bs. Here’s a thought, if you manufacture shit safety products that actually do give out after 6 years then the regulation should not be “expire it after 6 years” but instead “manufacture better stuff or don’t manufacture at all”. Think about EVERYTHING else that’s in a car that has to last longer than 6 years? Every single part of the car, plastic or not, is exposed to the same elements that car seats are and no agency is out there saying “you can’t drive a car if it’s older than 6 years from manufacture date”