March 13, 2023
Each month, members of our tribe submit questions they’ve encountered in their work. We use these questions to curate CPD training that is more relevant to you. Undertaking training in a peer-to-peer format like this within a community has proven to provide a well-rounded training experience, which we value.
Sometimes we include a survey in our CPD to understand the spread of opinions on a controversial matter. Where the range of views is broad, it points to a guidance void. We regularly feed information to the DVSA to affect policy change or gain industry clarification on ambiguous points.
This month our question comes from Paul and Dave at Abacus, who ask:
“Hey there, hope you’re all good. I do have a question for you to find out about that may be useful at some point. It concerns child seat belts. In the manual, it asks us to test all seat belts, whether child seats or fitted as standard, but there doesn’t seem to be any failure criteria for an obviously faulty or dangerous fault on child seats at all. What do you do in the event that you find a faulty or dangerous child seat belt?”
For me, the question that the guys have sent in has created a split of opinion here, as most testers seem to give a cursory check to the belt that holds the child seat in, but the DVSA guidance states – You must check any visible parts of:
If the guidance states that you should or could check the visible parts of all child restraints fitted, then this implies that as testers, we should check the actual child seat belts and, if faulty, then apply the appropriate fail criteria as we would with a regular seat belt or buckle.
So to answer the initial question, I think you can inspect a child seat and can fail if the fail criteria is met.
I have turned this question into a poll as I am keen to know how many people actually test the seat belts within a child seat, so please select an answer that you most agree with.
Most respondents voted in favour of seat belt testing (62%).
The remaining respondents voted against seat belt testing or ignored the child seat altogether.
What was interesting from this survey was the significant split in testers’ opinions. What are your thoughts on testing child seat seatbelts? Join the discussion and leave us a comment below.
All the best. Team MOT Juice.
