Surviving the crash

Now, however, Dorel Juvenile Group Inc., a car seat manufacturer in Foxborough, says its Safety 1st Complete Air Convertible Car Seat is designed to protect infants and children during side-impact crashes. It features air cushions that cover the side of a child’s head. The pockets of air offset the harsh, whipping impact of a crash. Unlike air bags - which expand upon sudden impact - they are already inflated.

The seat costs $249 - an infant-only version is $179 - and can be positioned to face front or rear, accommodating children who weigh up to 50 pounds.

Dorel said its technology, which it calls Air Protect, is the result of 3,000 prototypes and more than two years of testing.

“Thousands and thousands of tests later, we’d explored a combination of a lot of different things - looking at protection on the outside shell of car seats to foams all over the place,’’ said David Amirault, the company’s director of design and engineering. “We found that to have some sort of technology on the outside of the car seat wasn’t going to do the trick. The car seat’s not going to stop a door. That’s when we started focusing on cushioning the blow.’’

In developing Air Protect, Dorel went to Kettering University, the Flint, Mich., school owned by General Motors Corp. There, the company teamed up with Janet Brelin-Fornari, director of the school’s Crash Safety Center. The Dorel team performed deceleration tests designed to simulate side-impact crashes - allowing engineers to test the effects of crashes without actually crashing dozens of cars.

Brelin-Fornari said she was impressed with the results. “It is a novel idea with an air bag,’’ she said. “It doesn’t deploy, but it’s there always ready to protect the head and neck of the child.’’

“We were learning a lot of things together, at the same time, understanding the crash performance aspects,’’ Amirault said. “We would bring in several different mockups or variations of things we developed, and literally worked hands-on at the labs.’’

Dorel and Kettering officials said they are seeking a federal standard for side-impact safety ratings, based on what they learned with Air Protect. There is no federal threshold for child safety in side-impact crashes.

“A lot of products out there claim to have side-impact protection, but you really don’t know what that means,’’ Brelin-Fornari said. “There could be a dramatic difference in trying to decrease the risk of injury.’’

All 50 states and the District of Columbia require children to be restrained in vehicles. According to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security, an estimated 425 lives statewide were saved with car seats in 2006 alone.

Hanah Smith, a spokeswoman for the state agency, said child car seats reduce the likelihood of an infant being killed in a crash by 71 percent and the risk of a toddler (1 through 4 years old) being killed by 54 percent.

She advises parents to visit www.mass.gov/childsafetyseats for information on car seats.

John M. Guilfoil can be reached at jguilfoil@globe.com