Letter to the Editor

I Don’t Think These Baby Seats Are Safe.

15 years ago Amazon would not support products that didn’t meet the safety standards.

Wind forward 10 years and Amazon will stock any product and remove themselves from any responsibility saying it is not their role to police the plethora of clearly unsafe seats appearing on their site. The issue being that public perception is if Amazon are selling it must meet the safety requirements. Incorrect.

Now wind forward to today and it appears that physical retailers may be also now be turning a blind eye.

A good example being the Kids Ride Shotgun baby seat. Looks a fun product and they have done a very good marketing job, but it does not meet the safety standards. Let’s not kid ourselves, a seat with no protection for the child or restraints would not meet any safety standard for good reason. Whether they feel their seat is not applicable to the current standard or not, what happens if you brake suddenly, and the child is not restrained?

This seat as far as I am aware is not stocked in any major retailer in the UK who would insist on compliance with EN14344. But I see it in a lot of stores in Australia. So, my point is, where does the responsibility lie? Should the retailer in Australia ask the questions, as their UK counterparts would do as part of the buying process?

This is not to say that Kids Ride Shotgun is unsafe. This type of seat has been sold for many years to older children under different guises such as the Oxford Seat, Leco etc. But the difference here is firstly they targeted older children, and secondly, when the seat is stocked in stores, there is a belief by the consumer that the retailer has done the safety checks, and this isn’t the case.

All it takes is one unfortunate incident and these stores will have put themselves in a very difficult position.

M Newman, Queensland