The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has issued a recall for a car seat that has been released to the market for three years. This is rather surprising, taking into consideration how long the car seat has been available to the masses for such a long period of time (relatively speaking, of course). The car seat in question that has been recalled is known as Graco My Ride 65 by Graco Children’s Products Incorporated. What is the issue plaguing it? It has troubles with its webbing. In other words, in the event of a crash, the Graco My Ride 65 car seat’s webbing could end up as the reason behind your child being hurt. According to experts, the consumer has very little leeway in the event where a car seat is faulty and it has not seen any recall, apart from getting another model that has picked up the NHTSA’s nod of approval. However, it does raise the question as to what the folks over at NHTSA have been doing before approving the Graco My Ride 65 all those years ago, only to issue a recall now. Perhaps it is time to sit down and count our blessings that anyone who has used the Graco My Ride 65 and emerged unscathed from the situation.

Foster dad James Denton shared, "I wouldn't expect it to be recalled at all. Car seats are something that you expect will be made well especially when safety of kids are involved. So it's just shocking." Another person, Kristi Berg who is a preschool teacher, voiced out her concern of the situation, "It's very concerning. You want to make sure your children are safe, for having them out for several years, that's very scary… especially for a parent."

The NHTSA claims that this is Graco's tenth car seat recall over the past ten years, and it should be deemed as unacceptable, especially for parents with children. Perhaps it would be wiser to move on to other brands that are in the market like Recaro, or at least a brand that has a far lower number of recalls associated with it. It ought to be one of the top priorities when selecting a car seat, and with the amount of information available at our fingertips these days, it should not be too difficult to check out customer reviews of the various child car seat brands in the market.

As all car seats need to be crash tested before going on sale, what about Graco? Something must have gone wrong somewhere during the crash testing process, otherwise how else are they being approved for sales before experiencing a recall, with the latter happening a few years down the road? It would be prudent to look into the testing process to make sure that there is nothing untoward about the situation. Perhaps it is more of an issue of the manufacturing process, where certain batches of different parts do experience a manufacturing anomaly compared to the model that has been sent for testing, but it would be better to get to the bottom of it all before a life is needlessly lost.

For those who are still unsure as to whether your child’s car seat is recalled, it would be wise to bring it over to Cox or Mercy for testing. The contact numbers are as follows:

• Mercy Springfield - 417-820-6671
• Cox Health - 417-269-0920

Alternatively, the DIY parents among you can always pay a visit to their respective websites of Mercy Springfield and Cox Health. It is always advisable to err on the side of caution in this case rather than suffer a tragedy.