by Joyce Slaton posted in Products

YouTube videos and car seat manuals make car seats look so easy to install using LATCH. You attach this thingy to that one, you give everything a pull -- and it's in! But when you're out in your own vehicle, just you and the car seat, things aren't so easy.
The places you attach the LATCH hooks are...where, now" And you're supposed to hook the seat's tether on -- where is that thing" Could it really be this hard to connect this to that" Could that be right" You're reduced to getting your car's manual (pray it's still in the glovebox!), and then comparing back and forth with the car seat manual, trying to reconcile the two.
The Insurance Institute of Highway Safety agrees that installing car seats is a weirdly stressful chore -- it began rating LATCH hardware ease of use in cars several years ago, announcing in 2015 that only 3 out of 100 vehicles evaluated by the IIHS has "good" child restraint installation hardware. The rest" Poor or marginal. It's not your imagination! Your car really does make it hard!

The (sorta) good news is that the IIHS has released its ratings to the public. To find out how your car rates for LATCH ease of use (or to check out a bunch of cars at once, if you're mulling over a purchase), go to the IIHS ratings home page. There you can either search for your specific make and model, or browse through cars by type: mid-sized SUVs, minivans, large luxury cars.
When you zero in on a ...