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It’s Child Passenger Safety Week in America. According to the global nonprofit organization Safe Kids Worldwide, vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death and injury for American children, and properly used child safety seats can reduce the risk of death by 71 %. However, also according to Safety Kids Worldwide, 60% of car seats are not used or installed correctly.
Under normal circumstances, you can take your car and car seat to some fire stations or other locations to have a certified passenger safety technician make sure you have it installed correctly. While you may be able to find an in-person location that is open, there are a variety of virtual and online opportunities available. Of course, simply reading the instructions can go a long way. You can also do your research and then buy a seat that is well designed to be easy to install. I found the Baby Gear Lab tests and ratings to be particularly helpful when shopping for my own infant car seat. I even bought their number one pick, Chicco KeyFit 30, which you can see in this test.
Ah, which brings us to this test. If you are looking for another item that can help ensure proper fit of the child safety seat, purchase a minivan. The seat height, the huge door opening and the sliding door itself make it a real breeze. However, the 2021 Honda Odyssey in particular is designed to go beyond those inherent advantages.
The reason is the standard center row “Magic Slide” shown above. The central part can be removed (the process is simple, but the thing is quite heavy), which then allows to move the two external positions laterally. This is unique among minivans. It can also recline and slide longitudinally, which is not unique (it also can’t slide back and forth as much as a Toyota Sienna or Kia Sedona).
Being able to move the two outer seats together to the center of the truck increases safety, as it is further away from the doors and therefore inherently better impact. There’s a reason why car safety seats, particularly those for babies, are recommended to be mounted in the middle seat.
You can then see the difference between where the seat is in its outermost position (and where it would be with the middle seat in place) and where it is when you push both outer seats together.
You can also leave one of the outer seats in place and move the other fully to the center (below). This basically creates the old school two-person bench seating arrangement.
Now keep in mind that you can do all of this by moving with the car seat and its base in place. That would be the advantage of using one of the outer seats instead of the middle seat. You can certainly mount the car seat in the Odyssey’s middle seat though, especially since doing so means you can still use the outboards. There is more than enough shoulder room for even large adults to feel comfortable.
Above you can see the seat, its base on its own, and the LATCH anchors behind the plastic covers that need to be removed and stored somewhere.
There are no such covers on the outer seats. They are easy to see and reach, which helped the Odyssey’s LATCH anchors receive the best possible rating of Good + from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. I literally secured the Chicco base in seconds.
There are LATCH anchors in the outside third-row positions as well, although dropping an infant car seat there would require core test contortionist training that I’m just not prepared for.
Here’s how a Honda Odyssey makes installing a car seat so much easier for mom and dad. And if you’re wondering about other vehicles, the IIHS provides ratings for the cars it tests, while Cars.com is one of the only outlets that rates cars based on the fit of their car seats.
