There are those parents who say you know you’ve reached Easy Street when you change your last Pamper. Some proclaim going on an outing sans stroller as their benchmark.
 
Others insist it all comes down to the car seat. When you can hop in a car, unencumbered by tens of pounds of molded plastic, cushy padding and the network of straps that laces them together and always seems to get hopelessly twisted whenever you’re running late, you’ve transcended the baby gear stage.
 
That stage lasts eight years in North Carolina, where children must be restrained in a car seat or booster until they celebrate their 8th birthday or reach 80 pounds.
 
Selecting that first car seat felt like a true rite of passage. Round-bellied, I waddled up and down the car seat aisles at Babies R Us, searching for the perfect seat. (Word of advice for expectant moms: There are no perfect car seats; practically all of them have fallen prey to one recall or another.)

It’s a weighty responsibility: I remember leaving the hospital with my first-born. I strapped him into his infant Snugride and settled in alongside to watch over His Babyness, lest my new boss need tending during the five minutes it took to travel home from Rex Hospital. My husband drove, commenting on how the phrase “defensive driver” suddenly took on new meaning when there’s seven pounds, five ounces of your combined DNA riding in the back seat.

But the portable baby buckets that contain infants their first few months of life are quickly outgrown. By the time my son was four months old, he’d downed enough breast milk to reach the 26-inch height limit. And that’s where the real fun began. It was time for a convertible car seat, which would take him all the way until his fourth birthday, give or take a few pounds. At that time, all roads led to the Britax Roundabout, an overpriced hunk of plastic topped by stylish seat covers in animal prints, camel-colored velvets and midnight denims. I slapped down my credit card, lured by the impact-absorbing foam, even though every car seat on the market has to meet the same minimum safety requirements.

Over the years, we’ve acquired other car seats – I think we have five, plus the same number of boosters – and never gave it much more thought until learning recently about a Chicago Tribune investigation that found 31 infant car seats dislodged from their bases or notched similarly unsavory achievements in a series of frontal crashes staged by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. One infant carrier flew off its base and hurled its baby dummy face-first into the back of the driver’s seat in the test crashes conducted on 2008 model year vehicles. Ouch.

The Tribune discovered the data, which was never publicized, in the midst of thousands of pages of test reports. (See what an important role newspapers serve???)

We place a lot of stock in car seats, expecting them to save lives. Ten years ago when I joined The News & Observer, one of the first stories I wrote was about a 3-month-old baby who had died in a car crash. She hadn’t been buckled in; the force of the impact catapulted her onto Interstate 85. Even though I had no babies of my own at the time, I struggled to find a sensitive way to let readers know she’d been unbuckled – I knew they’d wonder  -- without causing the parents even more anguish.

Conventional wisdom is that any car seat is better than no car seat, yet the disturbing results unearthed by the Tribune highlight the lack of information parents have available when choosing which car seat is best for their kids. You can find safety ratings for cars, but not for car seats. To confuse the matter, many infant car seats fared differently depending in which car they were installed. All the word-of-mouth buzz that swirls around name-brand car seat manufacturers is not necessarily warranted: The Tribune found that two of the priciest car seats had some of the worst results.

That made me feel better about my decision to shun the expensive Britax boosters in favor of good ole Graco – the equivalent of buying Levi’s jeans instead of Citizens of Humanity. Recently, my 4-year-old daughter transitioned to a booster. Target had on sale a hot pink model, with hearts proclaiming “sassy,” “sweetie” and “fabulous.” I pounced. She was ecstatic – and hopefully just as safe.

Bonnie appears Saturdays on TriangleMom2Mom.