ISHPEMING — A new study about to come out shows cars and car seats don’t always align.

Many parents have to roll up towels and dissect pool noodles just to get their child’s car seat to fit properly in their car. That’s exactly what Megan Murphy found after purchasing a car seat for her first child.

Megan Murphy says, “We did a lot of research, found a good deal, ordered it online, sat in our basement and didn’t find out until the day we went to install it that it wasn’t going to fit in our car the way we thought it would. I couldn’t believe that the car seat we had purchased wouldn’t work in our car. I thought we had a standard car, that pretty much any car seat would work.”

So the researchers at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center put it to the test in a soon-to-be-released study. Researchers took dimensions from 59 child car seats on the market and from 61 different vehicles – that’s about 36-hundred different combinations. The results may surprise you.

Julie Bing, MS, of Ohio State College of Medicine says, “Roughly 40% of the time they would not be compatible. We broke that down farther to understand that roughly about 35% of the time you would need that pool noodle or that towel to kind of tip it back to where it belongs.”

Before you buy the child car seat the researchers recommend asking if someone from the store could help try the sample seat in your car.

For further clarification the Wakefield law and safety enforcement with the UP Child Passenger Safety Coalition are hosting a Free Car Seat Check at the Wakefield Fire Station from two-six next Wednesday night.

For more information about the event call Wakefield Police at 906-667-0203

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