Safety first! When it comes to babies, car seats are the No. 1 product every parent agonizes over. But buying a safe one is only half the battle — you still have to install it correctly. Shockingly, three out of four car seats aren’t properly installed, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. That’s why Dutch company Nuna, maker of the popular Pipa infant seat and a favorite of Molly Sims and Jessica Biel, set out to create a convertible car seat that is incredibly simple to secure in your vehicle. “The safest seat is the one that is installed correctly every time and properly fit to the child,” says Joy Nissen, president of Nuna USA. “This was the No. 1 priority in the design of Rava.” Here’s what makes this car seat different:
The Rava car seat ($449.95, nuna.eu) features secure installation that has simple instructions and doesn’t require lots of muscle to install. “Currently, all other infant or convertible car seats on the market require a secondary step of checking the bubble or line after installation,” says Nissen. “The Rava was designed and engineered to give you the ability to choose your preferred recline angle in rear-facing and forward-facing, without the need for a bubble or line.”
The car seat also features an all-steel frame, energy-absorbing foam and side-impact protection, up to 2 inches more leg room in the rear-facing position, and even cup holders.
Another fantastic feature: It allows children to sit rear-facing until they are 50 pounds. This is important because “the longer kids sit rear-facing, the more protected they are,” says Donna Laake, a registered nurse and injury prevention coordinator at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Laake notes that when a child is rear-facing, the back of the car seat will take the brunt of the force of a head-on collision, while if the car seat is forward-facing, the harness and the child’s head and neck will take the force.
And while parents often worry that older, taller kids can break or injure their legs while sitting rear-facing, Laake says that is not the case. “The American Academy of Pediatrics looked at data and found that kids don’t get more leg injuries rear-facing than forward-facing,” she says. “Kids are really flexible. They can sit frog-legged or with their legs to the side and are perfectly safe.”
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