The Kettering University Crash Safety Center was featured in a segment on Canada Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC) Marketplace, a consumer reports news show, in December.

The segment, which focused on consumer products on the market related to pet safety during vehicle crashes, was partially filmed in Kettering’s Crash Safety Center (CSC) in October. Dr. Janet Brelin-Fornari, professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of the CSC, along with research engineer Sheryl Janca and graduate students Craig Price and John Casci, conducted testing on five different products.

“This (Kettering) University lab is a regular stop for the auto industry,” the segment states. “Testing the safety of seatbelts, airbags, even child seats.”

Recent work in the Crash Safety Center includes contributing to soon-to-be-adopted standards by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to develop a side impact test procedure for child restraint systems. That research helped inform new testing standards that were proposed by NHTSA. Kettering worked with NHTSA for more than two years and the Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM) became public in 2014. The NPRM can be viewed online in the Federal Register.

The Crash Safety Center's role in this standard was the reproducibility and repeatability of the test procedure using a deceleration sled. This was achieved through testing of various manufacturers' products. All of Kettering’s individual test reports as well as summary reports with analysis are part of an NHTSA database. Kettering researchers also put together the test protocol for the deceleration sled, which will be a part of the final rule, which won’t be finalized until, at a minimum, the end of 2014. At that time, there is usually an 18-36 month lead-in for manufacturers to meet the standards set in the new rule.

“The research we’re doing at Kettering is affecting the national standards in crash safety for children in child seats,” Brelin-Fornari said. “Being able to work on a new federal standard is very unique, because they don’t change that frequently.”

Marketplace, currently in its 42^nd season, is one of the longest running shows in the history of the CBC and is one of the only news programs in North America devoted solely to consumer reports.