Child safety seats (or simply child seats or car seats) are secured inside a vehicle to protect children in vehicles from the effects of either accidents, sudden deceleration, or other impacts or jarring events. The child safety seats may include various different protective features relating to securing the child safety seats in the vehicle, securing the child to the child safety seat, and protecting the child once the child is secured in the child safety seat. Some of these protective features may be prescribed by regulation in certain jurisdictions, but others may provide optional, additional protection for children. Thus, child safety seats can have a variety of different features, and even different structural arrangements for providing many of those features.
Top tethers are a piece of equipment that can be useful for securing child safety seats within the vehicle, particularly for forward facing seats. The top tether is a strap that is attached to the top portion of the back of a forward facing child safety seat (or combination or convertible seat). The top tether may be attached to an anchor point at any of various locations within the vehicle and is then tightened between the top back of the child safety seat and the anchor point. The top tether may, when anchored properly, prevent movement of the back of the child safety seat forward during an impact or sudden deceleration. This can prevent a number of inches of forward movement of both the back of the child seat, and the head of the child, which can correspondingly reduce the likelihood of injury.
The anchor points can be different in different vehicles. Some anchor points are on the back of the seat to which the child safety seat is attached. However, other anchor points may be on the back wall of the vehicle, ceiling or frame of a rear door of the vehicle, rear shelf of the vehicle, a cargo floor of the vehicle, or under the back side of the seat to which the child safety seat is attached. Some of these anchor points may be relatively easy to find and connect to, but others may be difficult to connect to or find.
Compliance with attachment of the top tether is estimated to be less than 50%, and by some estimates far below 50%. This is, of course, an unfortunate statistic given the potential advantages of employing the top tether. Factors such as movement of the child safety seat between vehicles, familiarity with the locations of the anchor point, ease of access to the anchor point, etc., may contribute to this relatively low rate of employment. In a typical situation, the final attachment point for the top tether to the anchor point is done at the anchor point. Moreover, adjustment controls for the tightness of the tether are either located also at the anchor point, or at a separate location from the final attachment point (which is at the anchor point). Given that the anchor point is typically remote from the back of the child safety seat, the performance of final attachment and adjustment at either difficult to reach locations or separate locations tends to increase the potential for operators to find usage of the top tether to be inconvenient and therefore omit this important step. Additionally, when the installer is forced to work in tight spaces or from uncomfortable positions, the quality of the installation (e.g., the tension put on the top tether) may be reduced as well. Thus, it may be desirable to improve the ease of use of the top tether so that the rate of employment may be increased.