All posts by Mike

Diono Olympia Review: Why Buy the Diono Olympia?

When it comes to car safety, you can focus on driving safely and you can focus on choosing a safe car. However, if you have children, you also need to focus on choosing a safe car seat. This is one of a series of reviews I’ll write on what I consider to be the best car seats currently available in the United States.

2015 Diono Olympia – Should I buy it?

The Diono Olympia is another narrow and highly useful car seat released by Diono to respond to the clamor for seats that permit extended rear facing in the United States. It’s a convertible car seat, which means it can be used in several configurations, including as a rear-facing infant seat, a forward-facing seat, and of course, as a booster. Released in May alongside its higher weight siblings the Rainier and Pacifica, the Olympia is a high quality car seat that you’ll certainly be hearing more of.

Buy the Diono Olympia on Sale at Amazon.

Limits for Weight and Height

Rear-facing: From 5-45 pounds, and up to 44″ in height. Your child’s head should not reach past 1.5″ below the top of the headrest. I measure the shell height at 25″ again, which is consistent with previous Dionos and which makes sense since the general height limit by Diono remains unchanged from that of previous models.

Forward-facing: From 20-70 pounds, and up to 57″ in height. Your child should be at least 1, and it’s recommended that s/he is at least 2. Of course, research into car safety indicates children should remain rear-facing for as long as possible (the average is 4 years in Sweden, which posts the lowest child fatality rate on Earth), and after rear-facing, the child should remain forward-facing as long as possible.

Booster mode: 50-110 pounds, and up to 57″ in height. As with the previous Radian line, the shoulders of the child must at least reach the 4th pair of harness slots. Remember that children should remain in booster seats until their seat belts fit them over the shoulder, across the chest, and flat on the upper thighs.

Dimensions of the Diono Olympia

As with the Diono Rainier, the seat is 18.5″ wide at its widest point, which is at the shoulders. The seat weighs 25 pounds. Inside, it is around 14″ wide at the widest upper portion at the shoulders and slightly larger at the thighs.

Using the Diono Olympia

Just as with the Pacifica or Rainier, the Olympia arrives folded securely in a box that seems well designed for it, which makes sense when one considers that the seat takes up almost exactly the same amount of space as its ancestors, the Radian R120 and RXT. I was getting ready for a tricky installation, but it turns out that Diono has worked to simplify the process, which was a welcome surprise.

You will probably need to adjust the straps out of the box, but the learning curve is better than it used to be. Depending on the size of your child, you might keep or remove the harness pads. Per Diono, they are supposed to be used in the 5-point harness only when the child weighs more than 65 pounds.

Keep in mind that you cannot install it in the center of your vehicle with a LATCH set up unless you have dedicated LATCH hookups there; this is common to almost every car seat on the market today in the United States. This means you’ll need to use a seat belt installation along with a locking clip for a middle seat install, and this might be a bit troublesome. Newer seat belts typically lock when extended all the way, so this might not apply in your case.

There are 5 shoulder harness positions that range from 9″ on the low end to 17.5″ on the high end. The recline base must be used when the seat is in a rear-facing position. Because there are 5 different slots for harness height, most children are going to find a position that fits them comfortably for as long as they use the seat. You adjust the harness height from behind the seat by removing straps from the splitting plate and rethreading them into the desired slot. If your child is rear-facing, the slots need to be at or below the shoulders, while they need to be above for forward-facing. Diono is unique in that they do allow you to have forward-facing children with shoulders above the top shoulder harness slots as long as these children stay within the forward-facing weight limit and have the tops of their ears below the top of the car seat.

There is an angle adjuster that is frequently sold alongside the Diono line, as it helps cut down on the extremely large amount of space that the seat can take up when used in the rear-facing configuration. Depending on the size of your vehicle and the amount of space you need in the front seats, you may want to consider purchasing this. This is likely to be the case if you set the seat up directly behind the passenger or driver seats in the first row.

Buy the Diono Olympia on Sale at Amazon.

Why Buy the Diono Olympia?

This is the meat and potatoes of this car seat. The Olympia is one of a handful of seats in the United States that allows you to rear-face a child for up to 45 pounds. As I’ll note further below, this isn’t quite as good it gets, but every pound is precious, as the longer you rear-face, the safer your child is. In the US, parents tend to turn their children around into the line of fire at 1. In Sweden, this typically isn’t done until 4. Children in Sweden are far less likely to die in car crashes than children in the US. It makes that much of a difference. This alone is reason enough to buy the Rainier.

Besides that fact, the Olympia also includes a steel frame and an aluminum reinforced headrest for reinforced head support, in addition to EPS foam around the child’s head and body to increase levels of side impact protection. The sidewalls are not as deep as those in its Rainier sibling, which means potentially less side protection is available. However, it already meets current federal standards, so the benefits of the additional padding in the Rainier are yet to be seen.

However, I do have to note that the two higher weight siblings of the Olympia, the Pacifica and Rainier, have the largest forward-facing capacity of any 5-point harness car seat currently sold in the United States at 20-90 pounds with up to 57″ of height. Each transition in child seats signifies a decrease in safety (e.g., rear-facing is safer than forward-facing, which is safer than a booster position, which is safer than simply using a seat belt); the longer you can keep a child forward-facing in a harness, the better.

The Rainier and Pacifica now lead the field here, which means that if you choose the Olympia, you’re giving up 5 extra pounds of rear-facing ability, 20 pounds of harnessed forward-facing, and 10 pounds of booster time for your child. However, the Olympia is significantly cheaper than the Rainier or Pacifica, and it does offer many of the same benefits for less cost.

Something else that’s neat about the Olympia is that it’s one of only a handful of seats in the United States that can currently be tethered while rear-facing as well as while forward-facing. It isn’t required to rear-face tether, but rear-facing tethering does have its advantages, which I’ll discuss in a forthcoming article.

Finally, the Olympia is also simply an easier seat to install than most, due to its narrow base width of 17 inches. That means it’s actually possible to install 3 across in a number of mid-sized vehicles. I also like the fact that it has a 12-year usable life when used as a booster seat (remember, car seats do expire eventually), which is the longest in the industry right now, although I wish the harness lifespan were longer than 8 years.

The Olympia is an excellent car seat and, in my opinion, one of the best currently available in the United States for children between zero and five. It doesn’t allow you to rear-face or harness forward-face as long as its siblings the Pacifica and Rainier do, so I would recommend those if you can afford to spend a little more. If you can’t, however, or aren’t looking for those features, it is a fine choice for a car seat. You can buy the Diono Olympia in the two colors above here. Canadians can buy the Olympia here.

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If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.

Kathlean Kennedy, 25, in Hanoverton, OH, Killed in Car vs. RV Crash

Who:

Kathlean Kennedy, 25, from Massillion, Ohio was killed at around 2:27 PM on Friday, 6/4/14, close to Haverton, Ohio. She was westbound on U.S. Route 30 driving a 2010 Ford Fusion east of Lindesmith Rd. She crossed the center line and impacted a 1998 Allegro recreational vehicle that Robert Lausted, 44, from Bronson, Texas. Kennedy died at the scene, while her 1-year-old daughter, Elli, was in stable condition after hospitalization. Lausted was uninjured.

How:

Per police reports, Kennedy was westbound and approaching a curve when she crossed the center line into the path of the RV. Lausted told troopers that she appeared to have been looking downward before the crash, and that she “looked up and jerked the wheel, but it was too late.” After the impact, the Fusion spun and ended up on the side of the road. Kennedy was belted and died due to severe head trauma. Her daughter was in the center rear seat securely restrained in an infant car seat, and per emergency responders who’d removed her seat, it was still secured well after the collision. The child was airlifted to a local children’s hospital and was in stable condition. Alcohol is not suspected as a factor in the collision.

Why:

This appears to be another sad case of distracted driving. For whatever reason, Kennedy was staring downward, and did not look up until it was too late to avoid the collision. I have to wonder if she was not looking at a phone, as phone-related driving collisions have been increasing in recent years, and are more common among younger drivers.

Investigating the physics of the crash, it is not surprising that Kennedy died while Lausted lived, as her vehicle was massively outweighed by his. The 2010 Fusion weighs 3384 lbs and comes with a “good” IIHS frontal score. It was impacted by a 1998 Allegro Class A RV that weighs around 23,000 pounds, or 680% of the Fusion’s weight.  As a result, the Fusion driver automatically faced 580% more force in the collision than she would have if she’d collided with another Fusion, placing her at a severe disadvantage in the collision.

Given the likely speeds of the collision (~55 mph), the collision likely imparted at least 3.15MJ of energy into the Fusion. The Fusion frontal impact test simulates 245KJ of energy (a Fusion impacting another at 40 mph). In other words, the Fusion driver faced 1286% of the force she’d have experienced in the type of crash her car was rated for. Given the speed of the collision, her odds of survival were, sadly, virtually non-existent.

The part of this story that speaks to me most, however, is the survival of her daughter. Despite the unimaginably high forces imparted upon the vehicle and the severe degree of structural intrusion visible in the photos above, the child lived. Why?

I’ve written before extensively about the importance of choosing the right car seat and properly restraining children, and this is a textbook example of the advantage properly-restrained children have, even in severe collisions. Elli was almost certainly restrained in a rear-facing infant seat such as the Keyfit or MESA. Her mother also followed best practices of installing her in the center seat, as suggested by research. Properly restrained children can survive crashes that would otherwise be unsurvivable.

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If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.

Reagan Hartley, 22, in Greensboro, NC, Killed in Car vs. SUV Crash

Who:

Reagan Lee Hartley, 22, from Willow Spring, was killed around 10:30 PM on 4/23/14 between Patterson St. and Wendover Avenue on I-40 in Greensboro, NC. Hartley drove a 1997-era silver Volvo C70 and was hit by Ronnie Fichera, 46, from South Boston, VA, who drove a 1997-era green Ford Expedition. Hartley was a senior at Western Carolina University, where she was studying early elementary education, and was due to graduate in May after completing her student teaching.

How:

Hartley was eastbound on I-40 heading to her parents.’ She was impacted by Fichera, who was headed westbound in the eastbound lanes at an estimated 80-90 mph in an effort to evade police. He was reportedly impaired and carrying an open container of alcohol in his vehicle. Hartley died en route to the hospital, while Fichera was listed in critical condition.

Why:

This is another tragic case involving drunk driving, which is implicated in 1 of every 3 fatal traffic incidents in the US. Fichera, per reports, first began acting strangely around 10:05 at a Subway, where he displayed aggressive and erratic behavior. He left, was approached by officers, and drove off when asked to leave his vehicle. A pursuit occurred but was called off when Fichera entered I-40 in the wrong lane of traffic. Shortly after, the collision occurred.

Investigating the physics of the crash, it is not surprising that Hartley died while Fichera lived, as her vehicle was massively outweighed by his. The 1997-era C70 weighs ~3200 lbs and we’ll assume it came with a “good” frontal score, being a Volvo. It was impacted by a 1997-era Expedition that weighs ~4826 lbs, or 51% of the C70’s weight.  As a result, the C70 driver automatically faced 151% more force in the collision than she would have if she’d collided with another C70, placing her at a severe disadvantage in the collision. Fichera, meanwhile, experienced 33% lower forces due to his weight advantage.

Given the likely speeds of the collision (~85 mph), the collision likely imparted at least 1.58MJ of energy into the C70. The C70 frontal impact test, had one existed, would have simulated 232KJ of energy (a C70 impacting another at 40 mph). In other words, the C70 driver faced 681% of the force she’d have experienced in the type of crash her car would have been rated for. Given the speed of the collision, her odds of survival were, sadly, virtually non-existent.

The Expedition’s frontal test, had one existed, would simulate 350KJ of energy (an Expedition impacting another at 40 mph), indicating that its driver would have faced 300% of the forces his SUV was rated to safely withstand, given that the C70 imparted 1.05MJ of energy into the Expedition. While these were still tremendous forces, his odds of survival were still much better than those of the C70’s driver, and this was reflected in his survival in critical condition.

This was ultimately a wholly preventable tragedy, as are so many of these stories.

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If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.

Diono Pacifica Review: Why Buy the Diono Pacifica?

When it comes to car safety, you can focus on driving safely and you can focus on choosing a safe car. However, if you have children, you also need to focus on choosing a safe car seat. This is one of a series of reviews I’ll write on what I consider to be the best car seats currently available in the United States. This review centers on the Diono Pacifica, one of only 4 seats in the US that allows children to rear-face from birth until they weigh 50 pounds.

2017 update: The Pacifica is still basically the same seat since its release; weight and height limits haven’t changed, although fabrics have been tweaked slightly. It’s still one of the best seats on the market for extended rear-facing.

2017 Diono Pacifica – Is it worth it?

The Diono Pacifica continues a tradition of narrow, high-weight car seats that makes this one of the most useful seats on the market. It’s a convertible car seat, which means it can be used in several configurations, including as a rear-facing infant seat, a forward-facing seat, and of course, as a booster. Released this May alongside its high weight sibling the Rainier, the Pacifica is a high quality car seat that you’ll certainly be hearing more of.

Buy the Diono Pacifica on Sale with free shipping at Amazon.

Diono Pacifica Limits for Weight and Height


Rear-facing: From 5-50 pounds, and up to 44″ in height. Your child’s head should not reach past 1.5″ below the top of the headrest. I measure the shell height at 25″ again, which is consistent with previous Dionos and which makes sense since the general height limit by Diono remains unchanged from that of previous models.

Forward-facing: From 20-90 pounds, and up to 57″ in height. Your child should be at least 1, and it’s recommended that s/he is at least 2. Of course, research into car safety indicates children should remain rear-facing for as long as possible (the average is 4 years in Sweden, which posts the lowest child fatality rate on Earth), and after rear-facing, the child should remain forward-facing as long as possible.

Booster mode: 50-120 pounds, and up to 57″ in height. As with the previous Radian line, the shoulders of the child must at least reach the 4th pair of harness slots. Remember that children should remain in booster seats until their seat belts fit them over the shoulder, across the chest, and flat on the upper thighs.

Dimensions of the Diono Pacifica

As with the Diono Rainier, the seat is 18.5″ wide at its widest point, which is at the shoulders. The seat weighs 25 pounds. Inside, it is around 14″ wide at the widest upper portion at the shoulders and slightly larger at the thighs.

Using the Diono Pacifica

Just as with the Rainier, the Pacifica arrives folded securely in a box that seems well designed for it, which makes sense when one considers that the seat takes up almost exactly the same amount of space as its ancestors, the Radian R120 and RXT. I was getting ready for a difficult installation, but it turns out that Diono has worked to simplify the process, which was a welcome surprise. You can download the Diono Pacifica manual here.

You will likely need to adjust the straps out of the box, but the learning curve is gentle. Depending on the size of your child, you might keep or remove the harness pads. Per Diono, they are supposed to be used in the 5-point harness only when the child weighs more than 65 pounds.

There are 5 shoulder harness positions that range from 9″ on the low end to 17.5″ on the high end. The recline base must be used when the seat is in a rear-facing position. Because there are 5 different slots for harness height, most children are going to find a position that fits them comfortably for as long as they use the seat. You adjust the harness height from behind the seat by removing straps from the splitting plate and rethreading them into the desired slot. If your child is rear-facing, the slots need to be at or below the shoulders, while they need to be above for forward-facing. Diono is unique in that they do allow you to have forward-facing children with shoulders above the top shoulder harness slots as long as these children stay within the forward-facing weight limit and have the tops of their ears below the top of the car seat.

Keep in mind that you cannot install it in the center of your vehicle with a LATCH set up unless you have dedicated LATCH hookups there; this is common to almost every car seat on the market today in the United States. This means you’ll need to use a seat belt installation along with a locking clip for a middle seat install, and this might be a bit troublesome.

There is an angle adjuster that you can buy to use with the Diono seats. It’s a really popular accessory as it helps cut down on the extremely large amount of space that the seat can take up when used in the rear-facing configuration. Depending on the size of your vehicle and the amount of space you need in the front seats, you may want to consider purchasing this. This is likely to be the case if you set the seat up directly behind the passenger or driver seats in the first row.

Buy the Diono Pacifica on Sale with free shipping at Amazon.

Why Buy the Diono Pacifica?

This is the meat and potatoes of this car seat. The Pacifica is one of a handful of seats in the United States that allows you to rear-face a child for up to 50 pounds. Every pound is precious, as the longer you rear-face, the safer your child is. In the US, parents tend to turn their children around into the line of fire at 1. In Sweden, this typically isn’t done until 4. Children in Sweden are far less likely to die in car crashes than children in the US. It makes that much of a difference. This alone is reason enough to buy the Pacifica.

Besides that fact, the Pacifica also includes a steel frame and an aluminum reinforced headrest for reinforced head support, in addition to EPS foam around the child’s head and body to increase levels of side impact protection. The sidewalls are not as deep as those in its Rainier sibling, which means potentially less side protection is available. However, it already meets current federal standards, so the benefits of the additional padding in the Rainier are yet to be seen.

Something that sets the Pacifica and Rainier apart from every other car seat is that they have the largest forward-facing capacity of any 5-point harness car seat currently sold in the United States at 20-90 pounds with up to 57″ of height. Each transition in child seats signifies a decrease in safety (e.g., rear-facing is safer than forward-facing, which is safer than a booster position, which is safer than simply using a seat belt); the longer you can keep a child forward-facing in a harness, the better. The Pacifica, along with the Rainier now lead the field here.

Something else that’s neat about the Pacifica is that it’s one of only a handful of seats in the United States that can currently be tethered while rear-facing as well as while forward-facing. It isn’t required to rear-face tether, but rear-facing tethering does have its advantages, which I’ll discuss in a forthcoming article.

Finally, the Pacifica is also simply an easier seat to install than most, due to its narrow base width of 17 inches. That means it’s actually possible to install 3 across in a number of midsized vehicles. I also like the fact that it has a 12-year usable life when used as a booster seat (remember, car seats do expire eventually), which is the longest in the industry right now, although I wish the harness lifespan were longer than 8 years.

The Pacifica is an excellent car seat and, in my opinion, one of the three best currently available in the United States for children between zero and five.  You can buy the Diono Pacifica in several colors above here. Canadians can buy the Pacifica here.

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If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.

Tracy Morgan, 45, by New Brunswick, NJ, Injured in Van vs. Semi Crash

Who:
Tracy Morgan, 45, a noted celebrity and former star of “30 Rock”, was critically injured at around 1 AM close to New Brunswick, New Jersey on the Turnpike on Saturday, 6/7/14. He was a passenger in a 2014-era 2500 High Roof 170″ WB Mercedes Sprinter van, in which James McNair, 63, Morgan’s writer, was killed and three others–Jeff Millea (critically), Ardie Fuqua, and Harris Stanton, were also injured. The driver was unhurt. The collision involved six vehicles and took place at mile marker 71.5 in the northbound turnpike. They were impacted by a Peterbilt semi trailer driven by Kevin Roper, 35, from Georgia. A Buick, Ford-150, and another semi trailer were also involved in the collision.

How:
Per police reports, the Sprinter was rear-ended by an 18-wheeler whose driver had been dozing and had not noticed that traffic had begun to slow in front of him until it was too late. He noticed the Sprinter just before the impact. After being impacted from behind, the Sprinter rotated clockwise and rolled over onto the driver side. While swerving, it contacted the Buick, which then contacted the F-150 and second semi. The truck driver was charged with assault by auto and death by auto.

Why:
This is another case where fatigue behind the wheel led to needless deaths and injury. Such crashes are more likely at night, as was this one, since individuals are more likely to fall asleep while driving during nighttime hours, since humans are diurnal, or naturally active during the daytime.

Investigating the physics of the crash, the survival of Tracy and most of the individuals in the Sprinter was likely due to the low relative difference in speed between the Sprinter and the Peterbuilt semi truck. The 2014 2500 Sprinter weighs 6128 lbs. It was impacted by a Peterbilt semi that can weigh 35,000 lbs or more, or 5711% of the Sprinter’s weight. As a result, if the Sprinter were traveling at 35 mph due to the traffic while the semi were traveling at 65 mph at the moment of impact, that would have created a 30 mph speed differential.

Given the likely speeds of the collision, then (~30 mph), the collision likely imparted at least 1.43MJ of energy into the Sprinter. This is a tremendous amount of energy, and explains the significant structural damage and collapse of the rear portion of the Sprinter. However, the structural strength of the Sprinter design kept the entire vehicle from caving in, preserving the majority of the passenger compartment. It is likely that the sole fatality that resulted occurred because James had been sitting in the rear-most portion of the vehicle, and may have suffered the most trauma as a result.

It is currently unknown how many of the individuals on the Sprinter were wearing seat belts. However, wearing such belts would certainly have aided them in the collision, simply by giving them time to “ride down” the collision instead of being thrown within the vehicle as it was thrown forward and into other vehicles due to the impact of the Peterbilt.

This was ultimately a wholly preventable tragedy. Statistics show that truck driver fatigue is a significant risk faced by the majority of truck drivers on the road, who can drive for as long as 11 hours in a row without being required to take a break. Furthermore, many drivers work longer than these requirements in order to bring in their deliveries on time. Changes need to be made in these regulations to protect truck drivers and ultimately to protect all travelers on the road by extension. This becomes particularly evident when one considers that semi truck sleep regulations have actually become *weaker* since 2004, when drivers were only allowed to drive up to 10 hours before taking a break.

While the driver certainly bears responsibility for causing the collision, we need greater changes at the legislative level to reduce the risks of such tragedies reoccurring.

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If you find the information on car safety, recommended car seats, and car seat reviews on this car seat blog helpful, you can shop through this Amazon link for any purchases, car seat-related or not. Canadians can shop through this link for Canadian purchases.