As proud ambassadors of JPMA Baby Safety Month, we’re sharing useful information to help you practice the best safety tips and advice. Designed and engineered to protect from birth, Radian® is the original 3-across car seat that makes zero compromise to passenger protection or comfort. In this edition of Diono Journal, we sat down with Chief Engineer, Mike, to learn more about how the SafePlus™ Engineering Collection of Radian® car seats protects your little one.
SafePlus™ Engineering is available exclusively on select Radian® lines. A combination of safety and comfort features, SafePlus™ Engineering includes advanced protection like complete newborn protection. You can check out the collection at the bottom of this blog.
Hey Mike! We’re so excited for you to explain more about SafePlus™ Engineering. So far we know that it includes a bunch of advanced features, like newborn protection. Let’s start with the newborn travel high wedge. How does that work?
SafePlus™ Radian® models are designed to fit children from 4lbs to 120lbs. Small babies 4lb to 11lbs may require additional padding under or around them to achieve a snug fit. If needed, the newborn travel high wedge is provided to help improve the fit of the harness and recline angle for a newborn up to 11lbs.
Next, we have the anti-rebound bar. How does that work, and why it so important?
The function of the anti-rebound bar is to help keep the seat from rebounding back towards the vehicle seat in the event of a crash. During a frontal crash, the car seat and its passenger are pitched forward. That forward movement stretches the webbing used to secure the car seat, the car seat’s internal harness and compresses the vehicle seat. This results in stored energy. As that energy releases, it causes the car seat to rebound back toward the vehicle seat.
Alongside the newborn travel high wedge is a newborn protection insert and 2-in-1 liner. Can you explain what those are?
The Radian® convertible car seat provides plenty of room to fit children as they get older. The newborn protection insert helps fill the gap on the sides, providing a snug fit for newborns and small babies while the 2-in-1 liner helps fill that extra room, providing for a snug fit for newborns and small babies.
Radian® car seats feature side impact protection as standard, with the SafePlus™ Collection offering up to 8-layers of protection. Why is it so important for a car seat to have this feature?
It’s been estimated that 25% of all crashes include a side impact component. The side impact management is designed to be contacted first during a side impact and help direct impact forces toward the back structure of the seat and away from the occupant.
This is great information, Mike! Thank for sharing! One last question, we know that all Radian® car seats are tested over and above national standards but what about SafePlus™ car seats?
In the US the standard for car seat testing and crash testing is FMVSS 213. Up until recently, FMVSS 213 only included a frontal impact dynamic (crash) test. For the SafePlus™ testing we conduct additional testing above and beyond the required standard. For the Radian Q series, we also tested the seat to:
- The proposed FMVSS 213 side impact test (now added to FMVSS 213)
- The EU rear impact test,
- The EU roll over test
We also crash tests the seat to higher speeds and acceleration where the crash forces are up to 2X the force of an FMVSS 213 test.
Mike is a leading authority in the engineering, design and development of child car seats. With over 20 years’ experience and 28 patents registered in his name, he is recognized as a global expert in his field.
