Editorial policy

1. 1.Every specification names its source. Each figure in a product table shows the manufacturer page it was read from. If a figure cannot be sourced, the row is omitted rather than estimated.
2. 2.Every safety claim cites a primary source. Federal (NHTSA, FAA, CPSC, the Federal Register) or pediatric (AAP, CDC) or a state's own statute. Not another review site, and not a general recollection.
3. 3.Every source carries the date we read it. Not the source's publication date — the date of our reading, so you can judge how stale our version is.
4. 4.A law page ships only if the state's own statute or transportation-department page could be read. One planned state page is missing for this reason and we say so on the laws page rather than filling it in from memory.
5. 5.Where we could not verify something, we say so on the page. The absent NHTSA and IIHS per-model ratings are the clearest example, and they appear as an explanation rather than a gap.

• Testing we did not do. No 'in our testing', no implied lab, no claim to have installed a seat in vehicles we have not.
• Credentials we do not hold. No Child Passenger Safety Technician certification, no medical or engineering qualification, no 'medically reviewed by', no expert panel. See about.
• A safety rating we have not read from the source. NHTSA and IIHS ratings are linked, never reprinted.
• A price we cannot verify. Every buy button reads 'Check price on Amazon' because there is no live price data layer on this site. A stale number is worse than none.
• A fabricated review, testimonial or rating of this site. We have none, so there is no testimonials section anywhere here.
• That any product is crash-safer than another. Every seat legally sold in the US passed the same federal standard, and no consumer crash score per model is published.

The site is funded by affiliate commission, currently from Amazon only. Three rules keep that from touching the content:

• Rankings are set by our published criteria, never by commission rate. Amazon is the only retailer we earn from, so there is no differential rate to bias between retailers in the first place.
• The budget option wins where it deserves to. On several roundups here the cheapest pick is the top pick, and we say plainly when a premium product is not worth the premium for most readers.
• No paid placement, ever. No brand has paid for a position, a review, or a mention on this site, and none will. If that ever changed, it would be disclosed on the page in question and here.

Full terms in the affiliate disclosure.

We will get things wrong. Manufacturers revise specifications without changing a model name, models get discontinued, and laws change. When that happens:

• Factual errors are corrected as soon as we can verify the correction, and the page's modified date changes so you can see it moved.
• A substantive correction is named on the page rather than silently edited, so a reader who saw the original knows what changed.
• Reader corrections go to the front of the queue. The contact form has a Correction option in its subject list for exactly this, and a source with your report makes it much faster.
• A product that is discontinued is replaced with its successor, not quietly left in place.

Car seat content is health-and-safety content, and we treat it as a higher bar than the rest of the site.

• The manual always outranks us. Every page that describes a procedure says so. Your car seat manual and your vehicle manual govern your seat and your car, and where they disagree with anything here, follow them.
• A certified technician always outranks us. Free inspection stations exist across the country and they can see your car, which we cannot. Every safety page points at them.
• No general guidance overrides clinical advice. Where a child is premature, low-birthweight, or has a medical condition, the advice from their clinical team wins over anything on this site.
• We do not soften a limitation to sell a product. The clearest example on this site is the folding car-seat-stroller: it is a genuinely excellent product with a real time-in-seat limitation, and both halves appear in the same breath.

One author writes every page on this site, and the byline on each page links to who that is. There is no anonymous staff and no pseudonym. If something here is wrong, there is a single person to tell — and one email address that reaches them.