J.S.
answers from
San Francisco
on
Leave it for the trash truck.
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My infant son and I were in a car accident a month or so ago. We were both unhurt, though my car had to be towed and a lot of repair work done on the front end. I know that we should not use the car seat that was in that car now, and thankfully insurance, by law, covers the replacement cost. My question is this---what do I do with the old, now unusable car seat? I thought there might be some way for it to be taken apart and the plastic recycled, etc. but I can't find any information on this anywhere. Do I just have to leave it for the trash truck??
Well, it seems like there's no choice but to trash the car seat, after first cutting the straps to ensure that no one else can use it again. For those also wondering how to decide if you can reuse a car seat after a minor accident, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration provides this useful checklist:
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/people/injury/childps/ChildRestr...
Since our car had to be towed from the accident site (the first item on the checklist), we decided not to take any chances and replace the carseat with a new one. And since insurance covers the cost of the replacement, it seemed crazy not to.
Leave it for the trash truck.
I don't understand why it's unusable if the seat itself wasn't damaged. Was it damaged in any way? You said all the repairs were to the front end. This would be good information just in case....
What you have to do to ensure no one ever uses it is take scissors to the straps. Buy cutting them completely across, no one could ever use the car seat. That is exactly what an insurance company told my friend to do.
I went through the same question, what to do with an old
car seat. I have three kids and the first car seat we
got got passed down to the siblings and by the time my third one was done with the car seat, the car seat had
run out of its "recommended life by the manufacturer". Every car seat comes with a use life between 5-8 years
and the car seat manufacturer recommends that you throw them out after their use life. We had to dumped ours
in the trash. In fact, we had to dump three car seats
in the trash because we had also spare ones for a
second car, etc. etc.
Sometimes you find on www.craigslist.com of people posting free car seats at certain street intersections. It's not
very responsible.
trash it, don't forget to cut the straps.
I brought mine to Babies'r'us and they trashed it for me.
