ATLANTA — Parents could be strapping their newborns into car seats, unaware they aren’t designed to save a life.
Counterfeit car seats are ending up in the cars of unsuspecting families. The knockoffs are even showing up in hospitals.
Quick clicks on social media show people thinking they were safe, until the truth hits.
Brandi Rutland is a NICU nurse, and she spotted one of the fake car seats cradling a newborn during a car seat check.
“Once you dig a little deeper and see the stickers on the car seat, it says it was for a doll baby. If you look it up on the internet, it says it’s a doll product and not for humans,” Rutland said.
A closer inspection reveals a sticker from Hubei Dollbaby Chldren Products in China, stuck next to a warning label in broken English that said, “Never left child unattended.”
The family had no idea.
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“The parents were very grateful. They didn’t realize it. They said it was a gift. They thought, ‘Hey, it looked a little different from their first child’s car seat.’ But it was very good quality. It looked the part,” Rutland said.
The seats don’t meet federal safety standards. In this case, it was missing the chest clip that helps keep babies safe in a crash.
There are ways to spot the real deal. Legitimate car seats will have a label with the manufacturer’s name and the expiration date somewhere on the car seat.
“To the naked eye, they’re very, very similar,” mother Rachel Roberts said.
Roberts is a certified child passenger safety technician and said she’s the counterfeit car seats flood popular online shopping sites.
“When the box comes in, you realize your one-month-old is going to be too big for the seat. That does push people towards Temu and the off-brand sites that get listed on Amazon that are super cheap and look like a realistic seat, but it’s actually not,” Roberts said.
Verifying a car seat is real is crucial because a baby’s safety starts with the seat they’re in.
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