You wouldn’t push her off a cliff. You wouldn’t take a jump yourself. But you do as much to your child or to yourself if you get into a crash at highway speeds.
I’ve written a number of articles over the years about the dangers of speeding, and of how as humans, we don’t have an instinctive understanding of the crash forces involved. This is Vision Zero talk. It’s about how crashing at high speeds is like falling off a cliff. It’s about how you can’t drive beyond 43 mph on an undivided highway and expect to walk away from a crash. It’s about how speeding is the magic bullet for cutting fatalities in every country in the world. Well, if you haven’t had enough of these articles, here’s another. The information comes from a country that takes road safety much more seriously than we do in the United States (hint: that’s just about every other rich country). Today’s information comes from Sweden, specifically Trafikverket, or the Swedish Transport Administration. They’re kind enough to publish a lot of information directly in English to encourage a wider dispersal of information throughout their population. There I was, reading a brochure late at night titled “Safety in the car – how to protect yourself and your child“, when I came across this bit:
A frontal collision at 90 kilometres an hour is like falling from the tenth floor
Driving too fast can be just as dangerous as falling off a cliff or from a tall building. But we do not perceive the speed as dangerous when we drive a car. We understand the danger of falling from a height, but not how dangerous it is to collide at 90 kilometres an hour.
It’s hard to state things more simply. As noted in the image above, you’d never push that girl off that cliff. You’d never take a jump yourself. But if you get into a crash at 90 kph (55 mph), whether a head-on collision with another vehicle or a frontal collision with a building, a tree, a bridge, or a rock wall, you might as well have. You’re dealing with just as much force in a highway crash as you’d feel if you took a flying leap off a 10-story building, or if you pushed the person you most loved in the world off said building.
The thought is terrible. Unacceptable. It’s something we’d never willingly do to anyone. But that’s not how we see things when we drive. We don’t realize that we’re essentially flying off that cliff; we just happen to be doing so while the ground recedes exactly as quickly as we hurtle toward it.
You might think at this point: Mike, it’s not exactly the same. After all, I’m in a safe car. I’m wearing my seat belt. I’ve got frontal airbags, for goodness’ sake!
The problem is that you still wouldn’t willingly go off a cliff 10 stories high while buckled into a car, would you? Not even if it had a frontal airbag and a good front crash score. Not even if you could be sure of hitting the ground vehicle nose first. And you certainly wouldn’t strap your child into a car seat and roll her off that building, telling yourself she’d be just fine since she were rear-facing or forward-facing or boostered or anything of the sort.
You’re still dealing with tremendous forces. You’re still dealing with a very real risk of death for everyone involved.
We live or die by Vision Zero principles
Vision Zero principles aren’t based on black magic. They’re based on the deaths of tens of thousands of people. The knowledge was gained painfully, with bloodshed and broken hearts. We now know that if, for example, you’re traveling on a roadway with any risk of collision with opposing traffic (i.e., in an undivided highway), traffic cannot be traveling above 43 mph if the goal is for everyone to survive any potential collisions.
A 55 mph collision is 56% more severe than a 43 mph collision. As we’ve discussed elsewhere, the difference in miles per hour isn’t linear; it’s exponential. The formula for kinetic energy involves mass multipled by the square of velocity. In other words, you don’t divide 55 by 43 to see how much more severe the crash is; you divide the square of 55 by the square of 43 (55*55)/(43*43), which gives you 1.56, or an increase in force of 56%.
To extend the analogy a bit, a crash 100% more severe (in other words, twice as severe) as a 43 mph crash would not be an 86 mph crash, but a 61 mph crash ((43*43*2)^.5). These crashes, by the way, are almost guaranteed to take the lives of at least 50-75% of people involved in them, based on my analyses of fatal crashes at similar speeds. Keep in mind again that the IIHS tests vehicles for frontal collisions at 40 mph, which they already consider to be a severe collision.
We’re not meant to survive high speed collisions. Not even with the latest vehicle technology. If you’re going to hit something directly, your odds of living drop if that direct hit occurs above 43 mph. And few of us would expect to survive being tossed out of a 10th story window. But those are the risks we take each time we risk a 55 mph crash.
If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases. It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.
After reviewing hundreds of car seats throughout the history of the Car Crash Detective, I’ve only ever recommended a few of them–the ones that come closest to following best practices. Fortunately, the Diono Radian 3RX, which you can buy here, is worthy of the list, at least if you buy it for rear-facing. If you’ve got the time to read much more, we’re going to talk about what makes it worth buying. However, as always, let’s start by reviewing what to do and what not to do when car seats are involved.
What are best practices for keeping kids safe through car seats?
In a nutshell, the Radian 3RX helps you rear-face until 5 and booster until 9. If you want to follow Swedish best practices, it’s one of the best seats out there for rear-facing, but not the best seat for booster use.
With all that out of the way, how does the Diono Radian 3RXmeasure up? The Diono (formerly Sunshine Kids) family has grown over the years, and the Radian R120 was recently replaced by the 3RX, much as the RXT was succeeded by the 3RXT. Does the seat have a place at the table of best practices? Yes! At least when it comes to rear-facing; it’s not a good choice for boostering. Functionally, it’s the same seat as the R120 but with different prints, a new name, and a few improvements in features. We’ll take a closer look at it below from the perspective of a parent interested in best practices as modeled in Sweden.
How long will you be able to rear-face through the Diono Radian 3RX, per weight, height, and growth charts?
If you’re interested in rear-facing until at least 4-5 like a Swedish parent, you’ll be able to do so with most children using the Radian 3RX based on growth chart percentiles and its weight and height limits.
You can rear-face a child in the Radian 3RX from 5 to 45 pounds (20 kilograms). Your child must be 44 inches or fewer in height and her head can’t come within fewer than 1.5 inches of the top of the Radian’s shell. These are the limits on paper, but what do things look like in the real world?
First let’s take a look at weight. Practically speaking, a 45 pound weight limit means a girl who’s in the 90th percentile by weight will fit in the 3RX until she’s 4:6 (4 years, 6 months old). At the 50th percentile, a girl will make it to 6:3. And a 10th percentile girl will be able to rear-face until she’s 7:9! This is one area in life where being small pays off. Similarly, a 90th percentile boy by weight will have access to the 3RX until he’s 4:6. The usable range rises to 5:9 for a 50th percentile boy by weight and soars to 7:6 for a 10th percentile boy by weight.
The 44 inch height limit is more restrictive. Our 90th percentile girl no longer fits the 3RX when she’s 4:9. Her 50th percentile sister outgrows it at 5:6, while their 10th percentile cousin can continue to rear-face until she’s 6:6. Among the boys, our 90th percentile boy lasts until 4:9, his 50th percentile brother makes it to 5:6 before outgrowing the 3RX by height, and their 10th percentile cousin can keep going until he’s 6:6.
My child’s at the 50th percentile for height and weight. How long will she last rear-facing in the Diono Radian 3RX?
Remember that car seats are outgrown by whichever limit (height or weight) the child reaches first. In the 3RX, as in most car seats, height is the bottleneck when rear-facing. For exceptionally heavy children, you’ll run out of weight before you run out of height, but for typically-sized and smaller children, you’ll need to stop rear-facing due to reaching the height limit long before you would for the weight limit. And practically speaking, you can expect to rear-face a perfectly average girl or boy (one at the 50th percentile for height and weight) for 5 years and 6 months.
What about boostering? How long can you use a Diono Radian 3RX to booster, per weight, height, and growth charts?
Once you’re done rear-facing (not a day before your child turns 5!), you can move directly to the booster mode if you don’t want to forward-face. Or you can forward-face. The seat has the same effective lifespan.
I won’t spend much time discussing forward-facing lifespans for the 3RX because a.) rear-facing is safer than forward-facing, and we now know that most children will be able to rear-face in the 3RX until they turn 5, and b.) parents in Sweden are recommended to move directly from rear-facing at 5 to boostering. For the sake of completion, however, you can forward-face your child until she reaches 65 pounds or 57 inches, and the top harness height is 16.25 inches. Now let’s take a look at how long, in real-world terms, the 3RX will work as a high-back booster.
On paper, you can use the Radian 3RX in booster mode between 50 and 120 pounds. Your child’s shoulders need to reach the 4th harness strap slot to start boostering and the top height of the belt guide for the shoulder belt is 17 inches. Because there aren’t any headrest wings (such as those found on the 3RXT and RXT), you can use the 3RX as a booster for longer than its more expensive Diono sibling.
If we use the child’s likelihood of outgrowing the seat by her ears as the effective booster height limit, the limitations of the Radian 3RX as a booster seat become apparent.
If you simply look at weight-based growth charts, you’d get the impression that the 3RX could be your only car seat. A 90th percentile girl would make it to 11:9, a 50th percentile girl would make it to 16:9, and a 10th percentile girl would make well into adulthood. Similarly, a 90th percentile boy would make it to 12:3, a 50th percentile boy would make it to 14:6, and a 10th percentile boy would make it to 19. This sounds wonderful! But there’s a catch.
Much as with the Radian 3RXT, Diono doesn’t directly share the height limit for the 3RX. The shoulder belt guide is much higher than the top harness height at 22 inches, and it’s fixed. Because the forward-facing limit is 57 inches, this suggests 57 inches is the effective height limit. With this assumed limit, a 90th percentile girl by height would theoretically make it to 9:9, a 50th percentile girl would make it to 11:3, and a 10th percentile girl would make it to 12:6. Similarly, a 90th percentile boy by height would make it to 9:5, a 50th percentile boy would make it to 11:3, and a 10th percentile boy would make it to 12:9.
At this point, things still look good. The problem, though, is that there’s no way for a child to get anywhere close to 57 inches in height without dramatically outgrowing the seat itself. Diono doesn’t have a problem with this as long as there’s a good belt fit, but I don’t recommend putting a child in a car seat where the tops of her ears extend past the headrest of her seat, as this suggests a lack of head and neck protection from a whiplash perspective. Practically speaking, most kids won’t get past 52 inches before they start outgrowing the seat by height, even though they may well continue to fit the belt path and weight limits.
How long can my 50th percentile (height, weight) child use the Diono Radian 3RX as a booster seat?
As when rear-facing, what will limit your booster use of the Radian 3RX in most cases isn’t your child’s weight, but her height. Using 52 inches and 120 pounds as real world limits for height and weight, you can expect a perfectly average girl and boy (50th percentile height and weight) to outgrow the Radian 3RX in booster mode by 8 years and 9 months.
How user-friendly is the Diono Radian 3RX in daily life, in terms of lifespan, 3-across installations, LATCH and seat belts, and dimensions?
Diono markets their Radian line as the original 3 across seats, and they’re right. They continue to be the thinnest extended rear-facing convertibles on the market.
As noted above, the Radian 3RX is essentially an updated take on the Radian R120 I reviewed years ago. As a result, just about everything that applied to the R120 also applies to the 3RX, including how it works on a day-to-day basis. The seat will last you 10 years from the day it was manufactured and is still among the absolute best options when it comes to 3 across car seat installations in the United States. With 3 Radian 3RXs, you can make 3 across setups work in virtually any car you can buy in the United States that uses 3 seats and 3 sets of seat belts. The only vehicles that are consistently unlikely to work are those that use overlapping seat belts in the center seat position, and these vehicles can’t actually carry 3 passengers in the back at the same time, making them, for all intents and purposes, 4-occupant vehicles. Fortunately, you’ll be able to use the 3RX with just about everything else.
The Radian 3RX weighs just under 24 pounds and is 16.5 inches side to side, with the child’s shoulders measuring widest. When rear-facing, you’ll need to abide by a lower LATCH limit of 35 pounds; this limit increases to 40 pounds when forward-facing. I recommend going ahead and installing it with seat belts from the start, as they’re just as safe as LATCH setups without the hassle of needing to mind the 35 and 40 pound limits. You will, of course, still need to mind your child’s weight so you can flip to forward-facing or boostering once your child reaches 45 pounds (or the height limits, which, as discussed above, will almost certainly be reached first). As with other members of the Radian family, you have air travel approval to use it on airplanes and you can also fold it up into a backpack shape for travel. Diono touts its internal steel frame, but while that’s nice to see in cutout diagrams, remember that all that matters is how long a seat is rated for rear-facing by weight and height, regardless of how much or little steel it takes to get there. You can buy it in a range of colors, including the pink I profiled in this review, as well as in light grey, in blue, in red, in pink blossom, in black jet, in red cherry, and in blue sky. Each fabric is machine-washable.
While the seat can be easily installed through LATCH or seat belts, it’s important to note that due to the steep recline inherent in the Radian line, you might not be able to fit every newborn safely. If you have a premature or small (6 pounds) infant, you’ll want to consider starting with a dedicated infant seat. To decide, see if your baby slumps forward when you have her installed in the seat. If her head tilts forward significantly (i.e., in a way that could impact her breathing), she isn’t large enough for the seat or lacks the head control to sit in it safely, and you’ll need to try again in a few days or weeks but use a different seat (e.g., the Chicco KeyFit or any other infant seat) in the mean time. Remember that when rear-facing, the top harness straps must either go at or below your child’s shoulders.
Compared to the best Swedish Car Seats, how does the Diono Radian 3RX fare for safety-conscious parents?
The Radian 3RX is just fine for rear-facing, but to get your child to the seat belt phase, you’re going to need another booster. I recommend switching to the Clek Oobr once you’re done rear-facing.
Compared to the best Swedish seats for rear-facing, what sets them apart from the Radian 3RX are weight limits. Yes, there are a few other slight differences, including load legs, but the main real-world difference between the Radian 3RX and a car seat you might buy in Sweden or elsewhere in the European Union is how long you can use it to rear-face. The best Swedish seats will rear-face until 55 pounds, which is 10 pounds more than you’ll get from this Radian. However, keep in mind that the Swedish government recommends rear-facing until 5, and with the Radian 3RX, you can rear-face a typical child (one who hits the 50th percentile for weight and height) until she’s 5 and a half years old. If you’ve got a 90th percentile child by height or weight, you’ll be able to rear-face her until at least 4 years and 6 months, which is still exceptional when you keep in mind that most parents in the United States don’t rear-face past one. To put it bluntly, if you want to do as the Swedes and follow best practices when rear-facing, the 3RX is a perfectly fine seat.
The issue arises for boostering. Per the Swedes, you want to booster your child until she passes the 5-step test, which most children typically won’t until they’re between 10 and 12. Because the real-world limits of the 3RX are at around 8 years and 9 months for 50th percentile children, you’re simply not going to get most kids to the point where they no longer need booster seats. As a result, despite the 10 year lifespan, you’re not going to be able to get away with only buying the Radian 3RX as your child’s only car seat. You’re going to need a booster, and you’ll probably need it for another 2-4 years. I’m a fan of the Clek Oobr, but there are several choices on the market. What’s important is that you buy one that gives your child the usable height necessary for her to reach an age where she can pass the 5-step test. Pretty much any booster seat will give you the weight you need; the bottleneck is almost always the room to grow vertically for the child. Personally, I’d recommend simply using the Radian to rear-face until 5 at a minimum, and continuing to use it to rear-face if you’re lucky enough to get more time out of it until it’s fully outgrown, and then switching to a booster like the Oobr to ride out your child’s remaining years before she’s eligible for a seat belt.
Why buy the Diono Radian 3RX over any other car seat?
Buy the Radian 3RX because it lets you follow Swedish-style best practices and rear-face your child until she turns 5. Buy it because it lets you booster for almost as long as the Radian 3RXT while costing less. Don’t buy it to forward face at 1 or 2; you’re wasting your money and wasting the rear-facing capabilities of the seat. Buy it because you’re interested in fitting 3 of them side by side in any vehicle without worry. Don’t buy it for a seat to use from the day you leave the hospital (or birthing center, or home birth) until the day you put your child in a seat belt, because you won’t get the full 10 years from it. If you’re ready to buy it, when you buy the Radian 3RX (or anything else) through my link here, you help me write more reviews and articles on best practices. You can buy it in a range of colors, including the pink I profiled in this review, as well as in light grey, in blue, in red, in pink blossom, in black jet, in red cherry, and in blue sky. Finally, you can buy the Clek Oobr here. Drive safely!
If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases. It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.
I’ve reviewed hundreds of car seats over the last decade of the Car Crash Detective, but in the end, have only ever highlighted a few of them–the ones that keep kids the safest. If you’re in a hurry, I’m happy to say the Diono Radian 3RXT, whichyou can buy here, is one of them, at least when it comes to rear-facing. If you’ve got more time to read, here’s what makes it a quality seat. Let’s start by reviewing what best practices actually are when car seats are involved.
What’s most important when using a car seat to keep your child safe?
In a nutshell, the Radian 3RXT helps you rear-face until 5 and booster until 8 or 9. If you want to follow Swedish best practices, it’s one of the best seats out there for rear-facing, but only a so-so- seat for booster use.
When it comes to keeping kids safe through car seats, the name of the game is best practices. As with many things in life, knowing what they are is half the battle. The other half is following them. To summarize the Swedish approach, there are three things you want to do: rear-face until your child is at least 4 or 5, and then keep her in a booster until she’s 10 to 12, which is typically when she’ll pass the 5-step test. After that, keep her in the back seat until she’s at least 13. Everything else is just noise. You don’t fuss about forward-facing at 1 or 2 or anything ridiculous like that. You don’t negotiate about whether your child can start using seat belts so she doesn’t look different from the other kids at the drop-off line in elementary school. You don’t put her in the front seat just because she tells you all her friends have been there since they were 5, 6, 7, 8, 9…none of that matters. You rear-face until 5. You booster until 12. You keep her in the back until she’s a teenager. And you rest easy knowing you’ve done all you can from the car seat end of things, and you can focus on the broader picture of driving safely, choosing safe roads, and using a safe vehicle.
With all that said, where does a car seat like the Diono Radian 3RXTfit in? Is it a worthy member of the Diono (formerly Sunshine Kids) family and a worthy successor to the Radian RXT? And most importantly, does it fit into best practices? The short answers are yes, yes and yes for rear-facing but no for boostering. Functionally, it’s essentially the same seat as the Radian RXT with a new name and different colors. For the long answers, let’s dig into the details a bit. We’ll take the perspective of a parent interested in best practices as modeled in Sweden.
How long can you rear-face with the Diono Radian 3RXT (weight, height, growth charts)?
If you’re interested in rear-facing until at least 4-5 like a Swedish parent, you’ll be able to do so with most children using the Radian 3RXT based on growth chart percentiles and its weight and height limits.
You can rear-face from 5 to 45 pounds (20 kilograms) with the Radian 3RXT. Your child’s overall height must be 44 inches or fewer and the top of her head must stay at least 1.5 inches beneath the top of the Radian’s head rest. These are the theoretical limits, but what are the real-world bottlenecks?
Let’s look at weight as a reference first. In practical use, the 45 pound weight limit means that a 90th percentile girl by weight will be able to use the 3RXT until she’s 4:6 (4 years, 6 months). A 50th percentile girl by weight will make it to approximately 6:3. A 10th percentile girl by weight will be able to rear-face until she’s approximately 7:9! A 90th percentile boy by weight will be able to use the 3RXT until he’ s 4:6, while a 50th percentile boy by weight will fit within the weight range until he’s around 5:9. A 10th percentile boy will make it to 7:6 looking solely at weight.
When using height as the reference, you get less time. Our 90th percentile girl outgrows the 3RXT when she’s 4:9. Our 50th percentile girl outgrows it at 5:6, while our 10th percentile girl by height won’t outgrow it until she’s 6:6 . Our 90th percentile boy outgrows the 3RXT when he reaches 4:9, just like our 90th percentile girl. Our 50th percentile boy makes it a bit past 5:6 before outgrowing the 3RXT by height, and our 10th percentile boy makes it all the way to 6:6.
How long will a 50th percentile height and weight girl or boy last rear-facing in the Diono Radian 3RXT?
Since car seats are outgrown by whichever limit is reached first, we see that when rear-facing with the 3RXT, height is the bottleneck for most children. This, by the way, is almost always the case with car seats. Weight appears to be the bottleneck for exceptionally heavy children, but for typically-sized and smaller children, the 3RXT will be outgrown by height long before it will be outgrown by weight. Practically speaking, the expected rear-facing lifespans of a perfectly average girl and boy (one at the 50th percentiles for both weight and height) are 5 years and 6 months.
How long can you use the Diono Radian 3RXT as a booster (weight, height, growth charts)?
The headrest “wings” or “ears” on the Radian 3RXT reduce the usable lifespan of the seat in both forward-facing and booster configurations, as the seat is outgrown once your child’s shoulders touch the wings.
I’m not going to look at forward-facing lifespans for the 3RXT because a.) we’ve already established that most children will be able to use it to rear-face until 5, which is unquestionably the safer position when compared to forward-facing, and b.) parents in Sweden are recommended to move directly from rear-facing at 5 to boostering. For completion’s sake, however, you can forward-face until your child reaches 65 pounds or 57 inches, and the harness height tops out at 17 inches. With that out of the way, let’s look at how long, practically-speaking, you can use the 3RXT as a high-back booster.
You can use the Radian 3RXT as a booster from 50 to 120 pounds. Your child’s shoulders must at least reach the 4th harness strap slot on the low end, and the belt guide at the shoulder tops out at 17 inches. Practically speaking, the seat is outgrown as a harnessed and booster seat once your child’s shoulders touch the lower portion of the headrest (known in parlance among Diono parents as the “wings” or “ears” of the seat).
If we use the forward-facing height limit as the effective booster height limit, the limitations of the Radian 3RXT as a booster seat become even more apparent.
When looking at weight as a reference, a 90th percentile girl would make it to 11:9, a 50th percentile girl would make it to 16:9, and a 10th percentile girl would make well into adulthood. Similarly, a 90th percentile boy would make it to 12:3, a 50th percentile boy would make it to 14:6, and a 10th percentile boy would make it to 19.
Diono does not provide a height limit for the Radian 3RXT, but since the belt guide tops out at the same height as the top harness height, 17 inches, and the forward-facing limit is 57 inches, this suggests 57 inches is the effective height limit, ignoring the additional restrictions imposed by the wings. With that in mind, ignoring the wings, a 90th percentile girl by height would theoretically make it to 9:9, a 50th percentile girl would make it to 11:3, and a 10th percentile girl would make it to 12:6. Similarly, a 90th percentile boy by height would make it to 9:5, a 50th percentile boy would make it to 11:3, and a 10th percentile boy would make it to 12:9.
How long will a 50th percentile height and weight girl or boy be able to use the Diono Radian 3RXT as a booster seat?
Once again, height is the bottleneck. However, with the additional restrictions that come with the wings, most kids simply aren’t going to make it to 57 inches before outgrowing the Radian 3RXT in booster mode, simply because their shoulders will reach the wings before they reach 57 inches. This is the single biggest disadvantage of the 3RXT compared to the 3RX or 3R sister models (which replaced the R120 and R100 respectively). A more realistic limit is probably closer to 53 inches for most children. And if we use 53 inches and 120 pounds as the real world limits for height and weight, then a perfectly average girl and boy (50th percentile height and weight) will outgrow the Radian 3RXT in booster mode by 9 years and 3 months.
How easy is the Diono Radian 3RXT to use on a day-to-day level (lifespan, 3-across friendliness, installation, LATCH, seat belts, dimensions, etc)?
Diono markets their Radian line as the original 3 across seats, and they’re right. They continue to be the thinnest extended rear-facing convertibles on the market.
As noted above, the Radian 3RXT is just an updated version of the Radian RXT I reviewed years ago. What this means is that virtually everything that applied to the Radian 3RXT applies to the RXT, including its day-to-day characteristics. The seat has a 10 year lifespan from the date of manufacture and is still one of the absolute 3-across friendliest car seats on the market; you can use 3 Radian 3RXTs to fit 3 across in virtually any car sold in the United States that includes 3 seats and 3 sets of seat belts; the only vehicles I’ve consistently found haven’t worked have been those that require overlapping seat belts with the center seat, and those vehicles, frankly speaking, aren’t designed to carry 3 passengers in the back row at once, making them essentially 4-occupant cars and SUVs. Fortunately, the 3RXT works with everything else.
The seat weighs 24 pounds and is 16.5 inches across at the widest point, which is at the child’s shoulders. There is a lower LATCH weight limit of 35 pounds when rear-facing and 40 pounds when forward-facing; I’d recommend just starting with seat belts, as they’re just as safe and don’t require reinstallations based on vehicle weight limits; you simply need to mind your child’s weight so you know when you need to start forward-facing or boostering. It’s also approved for air travel and folds up nicely to wear as a backpack. It has a steel internal frame, although practically speaking, it doesn’t matter what’s inside a seat as long as it tests well enough to allow you to practice extended rear-facing. It’s also available in 12 different colors, and the fabric is machine-washable. You can see all the prints here.
The seat is easy enough to install; something to keep in mind, though, is that not every infant will have a safe fit at the newborn phase due to the rather steep recline in the seat. If you have a preemie or a small infant, you’ll want to consider starting off with a dedicated infant seat. The ultimate judge will be whether your baby slumps forward when installed. If her head tilts forward in a way that could cut off her airway, she isn’t old enough for the seat and you’ll want to try again in a few days or weeks but use a different seat (e.g., the Chicco KeyFit or any other infant seat) in the mean time.
How does the Diono Radian 3RXT compare to the best Swedish car seats (e.g., the 55-pounders)?
The Radian 3RXT is just fine for rear-facing, but to get your child to the seat belt phase, you’re going to need another booster. I recommend switching to the Clek Oobr once you’re done rear-facing.
Compared to the best Swedish seats for rear-facing, the main differences to keep in mind involve the weight limits. There are a few other things, such as load legs and so on, but practically speaking, the lion’s share of the difference between this seat and one you might pick up in Sweden or elsewhere in the European Union is the rear-facing weight limit. At 45 pounds vs 55 pounds, you simply won’t get as much time rear-facing before you’ll need to start boostering. However, as noted above, the Swedish government advocates rear-facing until at least 4-5, and you’ll be able to use the Radian 3RXT to rear-face the average child (50th percentile weight and height) until she’s 5 and a half years old. A 90th percentile child by height or weight will get at least 4 years and 6 months out of the seat, which isn’t sloppy either, considering the fact that most parents in the United States begin to forward-face once their children turn one. The bottom line is that if you want to practice Swedish-style best practices in rear-facing, you’ll do just fine with the 3RXT.
The bugaboo comes when you want to booster. The Swedes encourage boostering until the 5-step test is passed, which typically isn’t until kids are 10 to 12. Practically speaking, because the Radian 3RXT tops out at 9 years and 3 months for 50th percentile children, you’re not going to get to the point where kids are passing the 5-step test. In fact, there’s a chance your child won’t make it past 8 depending on his or her proportions. As a result, despite the fact that it has a 10 year lifespan, the Radian 3RXT simply won’t last long enough to be the only car seat you ever need for your child. You’re going to need to buy a booster seat. I recommend the Clek Oobr, but there are a range of options. The key point is to make sure whatever you choose gives your child enough height to reach the age where she passes the 5-step test. The weight is almost never the problem in booster seats; the bottleneck involves the available height offered to the child. I’d personally suggest just buying a booster once your child fully outgrows the Radian 3RXT in rear-facing configuration (which, again, will be past 5 for most children); that said, you can also just forward-face until you’re ready to buy a separate booster, or use the built-in booster mode of the Radian.
What makes the Diono Radian 3RXT worth buying over any other car seat?
Buy the Radian 3RXT because it allows you to follow Swedish-style best practices for rear-facing. Buy it because you can use it to rear-face until 5. Don’t buy it if you plan on forward-facing at 1, 2, or 3; that’s a waste of money and negates the primary point of a seat like this. Buy it because you want to fit 3 across in any vehicle without thinking twice about it. Don’t buy it because you want one car seat that will last from the day you leave the hospital (or birthing center, or home birth) until the day your child is ready for a seat belt, because it’s not going to last that long. If you’re ready to buy it, buying the Radian 3RXT (or anything else) through my link here helps me write more reviews and articles on best practices. Finally, you can buy the Clek Oobr here. Drive safely!
If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases. It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.
What happened to Jillian was a tragedy. But Evenflo was not necessarily the cause of it.
For the last six years on the CCD, we’ve talked about pretty much nothing but best practices. Along the way, we’ve also looked at a number of crashes that have sadly resulted in environments where best practices just aren’t practiced. A story I came across today involves that of Jillian Brown, now 8, who was internally decapitated in 2016 as a 5-year old when involved in a side impact crash along with her mother, Lindsey, and sister, Samantha. Without knowing all of the details of the case, I’m going to take a look at it from the perspective of the crash analysis itself, her car seat configuration, what we know about best practices, and which factors could and could not have led to different outcomes. The goal here isn’t to place blame on Evenflo, the family, or US laws and customs. As always, it’s to figure out the difference between what’s being done and what would be done if best practices were followed, and to advocate for the latter. Let’s go.
What were the circumstances of the crash, and what factors did the vehicles play in them?
With that in mind, this was a severe crash. Brown was driving a Suzuki Forenza, a vehicle whose production stopped in the US in 2008 when it was renamed the Chevrolet Cruze. Per the IIHS, the car had a poor side impact rating, with a poor structural and safety cage score, poor scores for rear passenger head and neck injury, and only acceptable injury scores for the rear passenger pelvis and leg. To put it bluntly, in a side impact crash with a small SUV-sized vehicle at 31 mph, you’d expect a significant risk of head and neck injury (e.g., a concussion, brain damage, skull fractures, broken necks, etc), terrible levels of vehicular intrusion (as in the vehicle hitting you inside your vehicle), and significant risks of broken legs and pelvises.
The simplest way to describe the potential impacts of such a collision is to state that death or severe, catastrophic injury would be likely. It’s a fortunate surprise that both girls and their mother weren’t killed on the spot.
Which injuries did the girls receive, and which car seats did they use?
The crash occurred. Samantha was on the driver’s side behind her mother. She was on the side of the impact. The ProPublica article doesn’t mention her injuries in any detail, but a GoFundMe notes she suffered a broken pelvis. Jillian suffered neck and spinal injuries and eventual paralysis from the neck down. Both girls were in car seats–booster seats by all appearances, because we know Jillian was in one and as the older sister, Samantha would not have been in an earlier stage seat (i.e., a harnessed seat). Jillian weighed 37 pounds. Samantha would have weighed more. No article I’ve found mentions which specific car seat she sat in. We can assume it was a booster, but only her parents know which one.
What do best practices suggest would have been best placements for these girls?
There’s all kind of press about how Evenflo was in the wrong for allowing kids to be boostered from 30 pounds onward instead of from 40 pounds. However, I don’t think that was the core issue here. Jillian weighed 37 pounds; she was much closer to 40 than she was to 30. I don’t think the 3 extra pounds had anything to do with the unfortunate issues she suffered. The argument put forth online is that, had the parents known that 40 pounds was a safer minimum for boostering than 30, they’d have placed her in a harnessed seat. Perhaps. However, at the same time, parents are already highly fond of ignoring safety recommendations, and the majority of states allow children to be boostered from the time they turn 4 or 5 already, regardless of weight. In all probability, Jillian’s parents would have boostered her whether the seat had said 40 pounds or 30. But let’s take a look at best practices. What would the Swedes do?
The truth is that best practices are rather straightforward here. The Swedes are fine with boostering from as young as 5. That said, they’re fine with doing so because kids are expected to sit properly in such seats and are taught to do so. I have no idea how Jillian was sitting in her booster seat at the time of the crash, but it’s a given that if a child isn’t sitting appropriately in a booster seat, she’s not going to be as safe as she would have been in a forward-facing harnessed seat, which essentially forces her to sit properly due to the harness. For all we know, she might have had the shoulder belt around her neck or behind her arm. Or not. We just don’t know. But we do know that she’d have been in in a booster seat in Sweden.
Does this mean she’d have suffered the same injuries there? Possibly. Probably not. For one thing, the intersection that led to the collision may not have existed in Sweden, or at the very least, may have had much lower speeds and speed cameras present, reducing the odds of the collision occurring to begin with. Additionally, it’s likely that the vehicle her parents drove would have had more safety features like a better side impact score and perhaps side airbags, given Swedes’ greater propensity to adopt safety-minded technology than Americans and American manufacturers in general.
What if she’d been rear-facing? Would that even have been possible?
On an entirely different note, as a 5-year old who weighed 37 pounds, Jillian could still easily have been rear-facing, whether in Sweden (where 55 pound rear-facing seats are available), or in the United States, where seats like the Clek Fllo, Clek Foonf, and Diono Rainier –all 50-pound rear-facing seats existed back in 2016, and would have allowed her to have rear-faced then and continued to rear-face for several more months, if not years, given her weight.
Would rear-facing have offered her more protection? Yes, by virtue of the fact that she’d have been pushed into her seat rather than out of it due to the forward motion of the collision (despite being a side impact, the vehicle was still traveling forward, which is why Jillian was found slumped forward after the crash). Additionally, she’d have received all the benefits of being in a harnessed seat. This would have been the absolute best seating configuration for her.
We can’t judge the effectiveness of a car seat from a crash test video
As tempting as it is to watch a video of a dummy being flung in one direction and use it as evidence of the effectiveness or lack thereof of a car seat design, we just can’t do so in a reality-based world–even if we’re physicians and members of the AAP. That’s not how crash tests work. That’s not how the NHTSA, NTF, IIHS, NCAP, or any other reputable organization tests vehicles. The dummies aren’t simply used as visual props; they’re filled with sensors which are read to determine the actual forces an individual of a certain size (weight and height and proportions) may have faced in a similar position under similar forces in a similar crash. It doesn’t move the discussion forward to quote individuals (even physicians) stating breathlessly that they would or would not have their children in particular seats based on their viewings of videos. With all due respect, you can’t tell a 300 HIC-15 head trauma from 3000 HIC-15 trauma by watching a dummy’s head snap back and forth. One leads to brain damage. The other does not. You tell them apart by sensors.
Despite our best efforts, tragedies can and do still occur when children are in cars
I’m the last person to defend corporations; my history on this site shows that I take the sides of individuals and not companies or institutions, because all too often, institutions in profit-based countries put people last, and we all suffer because of it. But underneath it all, I advocate for best practices, regardless of where they come from.
Had Samantha–who had also been boostered–suffered Jillian’s injuries while Jillian had suffered hers in exchange, her parents would not be blaming Evenflo, despite the fact that both children would have been–again–in nearly the same crash conditions. Had Jillian passed away and not been confined to a lifetime of paralysis, again, Evenflo would not have been on trial here, and the situation would have been viewed as what it was–a severe, tragic collision. Bringing a suit against Evenflo may help pay for Jillian’s considerable medical costs (especially since we refuse to adopt a single payer healthcare system that would make such costs bearable for families), but it doesn’t accurately reflect the circumstances of her injuries.
The only car seat configuration I’m sure would have offered significantly greater protection, given what we know, was rear-facing. But I can’t blame parents for not rear-facing a 5-year old. And I can’t blame Evenflo for an internal decapitation involving a boostered 5-year old. She either wasn’t mature enough to use the seat or she was. If she weren’t, she wouldn’t have sat properly. If she were, the fact that she weighed 37 pounds was irrelevant; a 5-year old can legally sit in a booster and can safely do so, as evidenced by its being the standard age in Sweden. Blaming Evenflo for this tragedy is a bad call.
If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases. It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.
We’ve compared the rates of child deaths in Norway to the United States in the past and seen how we’ve come up short in comparison. Today we’re going to make the same comparison with the latest data available between Sweden, another fellow rich country from which most of my research on best practices in car seat safety is based, and the United States. To put it bluntly, we lose far more children (a disproportionately greater amount) to road trauma each year in the United States than Swedes do in Sweden. And as is almost always the case in road fatalities, these deaths are almost always preventable.
How many children die in road traffic crashes each year in Sweden?
Per the NTF, 5 children died due to road traffic in Sweden in 2018. Four of them were pedestrians while one was a vehicle passenger. Between 2016 and 2018, on average, there were 4 deaths of children under 13 each year.
How many children die from road trauma in the United States each year?
Per the IIHS, who pulls numbers from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) of the US Department of Transportation, there were 880 deaths of children younger than 18 in 2018, with 639 (73%) occurring with passenger vehicle occupants, 157 (18%) with pedestrians, and 26 (3%) with bicycling children.
How do Swedish and US child crash deaths compare proportionally?
We know there were 880 child car crash deaths in the US in 2018 and 5 in Sweden in the same year. The US number is much higher, but how much higher is it? After all, there are more children in the US than there are in Sweden since the US population is larger than that of Sweden.
This is where proportions come in. For simplicity’s sake, we won’t compare the number of children in Sweden to the number in the US, but will compare populations and presume there are proportionally similar percentages of children in both countries. This is actually a rather accurate assumption, as the Swedish government notes the average Swedish woman has 1.75 children, while the World Bank notes that the fertility rate in Sweden in 2016 was 1.85 births per woman, which was nearly identical to the US’ rate at 1.8.
With that assumption out of the way, the population in Sweden in 2018 was approximately 10.12 million, while that of the United States was 327.2 million. In other words, the US population was 32.33x larger, or there were 32.33 Americans for each Swede. Let’s assume then, that there were roughly 33.33 American children for each Swedish child. The death toll in the US at 880 was 176x that of Sweden’s at 5. In other words, 176 American children died due to car crashes for each Swedish child who passed away.
The proportions are not even. It was much safer to be a child in Sweden in terms of odds of surviving a country full of cars than it was to be a child in the United States. Specifically, despite the fact that there were 32 times as many children in the US as there were in Sweden, the number of children killed was not 32 times higher, as one would have expected had the proportions held. Rather, the death toll was 176 times higher.
What would the death tolls look like if the US were like Sweden, or if Sweden were like the US?
If the US had the same safety record as Sweden, we’d have lost 32.33 * 5, or roughly 162 children to car crashes in 2018. Instead, we lost 880, or roughly 5.44 children for each Swedish child lost after controlling for population differences.
That’s a huge difference.
To see it the other way, if Sweden had our safety record, they would have lost 5 * 5.44, or roughly 27 children to car crashes in 2018. Instead, they lost 5.
Make no mistake; we’d still have lost more than a hundred children to car crashes even if we’d had as much of a safety-minded culture as that in Sweden. But the difference would have been completely explained by our much greater population. This is not the case here. As things are, if Sweden magically grew to the point where it had a population of 300+ million individuals, they’d still only have lost 1/5th to 1/6th as many children to crashes as we did. They’re doing something (several things) differently there.
Running the numbers this way gives us a different way of understanding what a difference exists between child safety in the United States vs that in Sweden. Due to a variety of reasons, things are different there. It’s safer. But why?
Why are road conditions so much safer for Swedish children than for American ones?
If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases. It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.
35,000 Americans will die this year on the road. You don't have to be one of them. A car seat and car safety blog to promote best practices for families.
If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases. It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.
