ANDREA
I just read this story, if you are buyinga car seat or already have one you should read this......
http://health.yahoo.com/news/170547;_ylt=AsgglNPBcMF.yCreII6miPRLvs8F
Answer
And also they should read this:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Media Contact:
Jam Stewart
Zeno for Evenflo
312-396-9748
Jam.stewart@zenogroup.com
Evenflo Company Statement: Consumer Reports Car Seat Review Not
Consistent with Federal Standards
Evenflo Car Seats are Safe and Effective -- Tested and Proven to Meet
or Exceed Government Standards
VANDALIA, OH, January 3, 2007 â Evenflo Company, Inc. is deeply
concerned that Consumer Reports magazine has decided to publish an
article that may potentially alarm consumers about the safety of
their infant child restraints. The magazine decided to publish this
article without consultation with child seat manufacturers, even
though the tests appear to have been conducted in October and
November of last year. Evenflo is committed to manufacturing safe
and highly effective car seats that meet or exceed government
standards. In addition, Evenflo subjects its car seats to extensive
testing both in-house and through independent laboratories to ensure
every car seat is compliant before initial sale of its products and
during ongoing production.
Despite our request, Consumer Reports has declined to provide us with
an advance copy of the article, and further declined to disclose in
advance of publication the pertinent information relating to its
underlying test conditions and protocols. This is especially
unreasonable, given that the magazine's test conditions and protocols
appear to conflict with the collective experience of car seat
manufacturers, NHTSA and the scientific community. Rigorous tests
conducted by NHTSA and Evenflo have consistently shown that both the
Evenflo Discovery® and Evenflo Embrace⢠exceed government standards.
Without access to the full review of the data collected by Consumer
Reports, we are unable to provide a detailed assessment of the
magazine's findings; however, we can offer the following facts and
observations about the specific Evenflo products that the Consumer
Reports article appears to discuss:
Discovery infant child restraint
Since introducing the model 391 Discovery in April 2005, Evenflo has
conducted at least 200 dynamic tests at three different
laboratories. Most of these tests were conducted at test
velocities that significantly exceeded the forces under the NHTSA
standard. None of the tests demonstrated any back angle compliance
issue. Additionally, NHTSA has twice tested the model 391
Discovery and it passed all dynamic testing requirements on each
occasion. Thus, between Evenflo and NHTSA, there are more than 200
passing tests regarding the Discovery at velocities that meet or
exceed the government standards. Evenflo unequivocally stands
behind the integrity of its test results and the Discovery® child
restraint seat and disputes the validity of the yet to be disclosed
Consumer Reports tests. Proper evaluation of those tests requires,
at a minimum, information about the test setup, the crash pulse, the
dummy and any alterations from the specifications in 49 CFR 572, as
well as any deviations from the test protocol set forth in FMVSS 213
and NHTSA document TP-213 Laboratory Test Procedure for FMVSS 213.
We have requested this information from Consumer Reports as well as
an opportunity to inspect the Discovery® units that were actually
tested.
Embrace infant child restraint
Evenflo likewise unequivocally stands behind its Embrace infant
seat. Evenflo disputes the validity of the yet to be disclosed
Consumer Reports test(s) and will review the testing information once
provided by Consumer Reports. Based on the limited information
available to Evenflo at this time, however, it appears that the
testing protocol and equipment used by Consumer Reports in connection
with the Embrace infant seat does not conform to test methods
proposed or adopted by experts from academia, industry, test agencies
or government entities throughout the world. Put simply, there are
serious issues with both the test protocol and equipment that cast
serious doubt on the validity of the test results. Moreover, Evenflo
is unaware of any material difference in performance when the Embrace
infant seat is secured by the LATCH method or through use of the
vehicle seat belt.
All Evenflo car seats sold today meet thorough standards established
by NHTSA and are extensively tested by car seat manufacturers and the
government. Consumer Reports suggestion that the present standards
should be abandoned in favor of its protocol is inconsistent with
real world experience and well grounded input from the scientific
community received in connection with prior consideration by NHTSA to
increase the child seat crash test speed.
As noted by independent commentators, there is no evidence to suggest
that infant child restraints would generally be more effective to
protect children in real world crashes if designed to meet higher
crash speeds. In fact, such changes may be counterproductive to the
overall safety of car seats in real world accidents. Like other car
seat manufacturers and NHTSA, Evenflo is committed to manufacturing
safe and highly effective child restraint seats.
We urge consumers to demand proper disclosure and review of Consumer
Reports test results and to carefully weigh all relevant information
before drawing any conclusions based upon Consumer Reports
forthcoming article.
About Evenflo
Committed to innovation, safety and comfort for more than 85 years,
Evenflo has been the trusted name in everything babies need to grow,
go, play and thrive. From bottles and high chairs to carriers and car
seats, Evenflo creates inspired products for today's active families
worldwide. Evenflo regularly taps into its Safe Baby and Toddler
Council, a group comprised of experts from key areas in the field of
child care, to provide product insights and research. More
information can be found at www.evenflo.com.
# # #
Why do US cars, now top Foreign Brands in Quality?
Q. It is now being reported that US cars, now top foreign cars in quality according to most general surveys. (see link). Question, "How do you think the US car makers managed to achieve this?" No trolls please! http://finance.yahoo.com/news/US-cars-toâ¦
It's amazing to watch people like Chris go ballistic just because someone asks a simple question that may seem to imply that Toyota has poor quality. Gee. I wonder if Chris drives a Toyota? LOL!
Here is another link to shoe US carmakers are beating Foreign cars.
http://editorial.autos.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=1149477&icid=autos_0430>1=22009
Answer
Well, it is a partially inapropriate question only because all cars are foreign. Every car maker makes their cars from parts from other countries, or in other countries. If Toyota makes a car in the US, is it foreign? VW's are made in Mexico. The other part of this is that the companies all own eachother. There is actually only a small handful of car companies that each make many brands of cars.
As that probably is kind of sideways (although not unimportant or untrue) to your question, I will offer this.
A lot of trends has to do with production cycles. As a company, leaders have to decide how much money to put into research and development and quality control. Each of those things cost money, which reduce profits. It is a balance act of spending enough money in those areas to keep consumers happy (but only just enough). In the 70s-2000's, US automakers had a skewed version of reality. They didn't spend too much money on those areas because they were still making killer profits. Part of the problem was the "Buy American" ideal. With people buying American even though they were increasingly crappy products, automakers had no initiative to increase quality. Why should they have, they were still making money hand over fist, and pouring money into quality would have only taken it out of their own profits and hurt them as compared to their competition that wasn't 'wasting' money on that. The problem is that it caught up with them. Late 80's early 90's fewer people felt that the motivation of "buying American" wasn't enough of a justification to keep shelling out money for unreliable undesirable cars. Increasing fuel prices (partially from the '73 oil crisis) also helped people justify making the switch. They began buying foreign more. By the time the automakers started to feel the pinch, it was becoming too late to make a quick turn around. Most cars have a multiyear development time. If you wanted to take a new direction, it can be almost a decade before those cars start making enough production to make a difference. Forward to 2010, you are starting to see that effect now. Even though trends were heading down in the 80's, US car makers were slow to make changes, let alone drastic ones, so things didn't really start to happen until much later. That said, some makers didn't even make changes as of 2010, and that is why we saw several companies close.
The reason 'Foreign' cars seem to be lagging behind is because they are at a different point in their cycle. They had made reliable cars for a long time, so they began to trim R&D and reliabilty to increase their profit margin. Now that they are starting to get bit, they will probably make a shift back (but that will take quite a few years).
So that is what you are perceiving.
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