Why it’s Breakthrough: It’s a child car seat with air pads on the sides to protect the head and neck. These are not airbags, more like safety pillows, always there, always protecting.

The Story: There is a reason one in three child car crash deaths is due to blunt side impact, and because of that reason that the Safety 1^st Company spent a lot of research and development time coming up with the Complete Air Convertible Car Seat with Air Protect Side Impact Technology. First and foremost, it’s not a seat with a built-in airbag. Rather, it’s a seat with a built-in deployed air bag, or better, air pillow. As a child moves against these pillows, air escapes through tiny holes, not only reducing the impact a child experiences, but moving the trauma of that impact away from the child’s body. Essentially, it’s a better protection system than has been previously designed for child seats. Specifically, it’s designed to protect infants who are rear-facing from 5-40 lbs. and 19″-40″ along with toddlers forward-facing from 22-50 lbs. and 34″-45″.

Safety 1^st engineers designed the Air Protect using breakthrough crash-testing methods that simulate the most violent and deadly types of side impact crashes: those where the vehicle actually intrudes into the victim’s car. By studying this type of crash, Air Protect created not just a unique breakthrough, but a better one armed with two layers of protection. First, in the event of a crash, the system immediately shields the child’s head from the impact, while in the second layer of defense, Air Protect enables the air to not only softens the blow, but then because it was engineered to allow air to escape from the headrest, the crash energy begins moving away from your child. The impact is absorbed and moved away more by these air pillows than it is by your child.

See it in action here