Daddy Troy: Welcome back to Gear Daddy. I'm your host Daddy Troy. Today, I'm talking to Kate of Britax, so she is going to tell us all about the Boulevard CS Car Seat. So, if you know anything about car seat, you said Britax is one of those brand that's really well known for safety. Okay, which tells how about the Boulevard?

Kate: First, I'm going to tell you about one in four car crashes actually occurred from the side. And so, side impact protection is so important in car seats and there is crumple zone in the front and the rear of a vehicle and we are more concerned right now with those side impact crashes, which are the most severe. So, what we've done at Britax is actually add an adjustable head support that's right here, it's a head rest that when you turn the knob on the side-

Daddy Troy: Now, it goes down now.

Kate: This is a shield that we call this true side impact protection and the true is not the opposite of false in this case. It's actually the truing, the aligning of the head, the neck and the torso, which minimizes the lateral head movement in a side impact crash. So, we are trying to manage energy away from the child, keep the child aligned in the vehicle, I mean in the car seat, so that they can survive a side impact crash.

Daddy Troy: This mechanism here helps you to do that.

Kate: Yes. It has energy managing foam on the inside, which is actually comfort foam too for the child, they use it a lot as a pillow, but on the outside it's a stiff structure. The nice thing about the Boulevard CS that's new to the Boulevard, I should say it's the quick and safe feature down at the bottom.

Daddy Troy: Okay.

Kate: This right here is the harness adjuster, that's an audible indicator telling us that the child is secure in the seat and you don't have to come back and check your harness straps. If this is a real child, you would--

Daddy Troy: So, it clicks the one it's the right tension or what we do? Okay.

Kate: Correct. There is actually a mechanism inside the adjuster that it knows when the tension is the -- that you needed to be. And you can continue pulling on the stopper its not going to get any tighter. It's just going to know.

Daddy Troy: So sometimes I did it to my daughter, I would tight it so tightly that she would complaint, but you tell me this right here when you pull, it doesn't get any tighter.

Kate: No. And the nice thing about this because it clicks the child can listen for it to, and then they know, they can be the one telling you. Okay Daddy, I'm safe.

Daddy Troy: Oh! Wow. Well, that's funny.

Kate: So, it's a really neat feature.

Daddy Troy: So, another thing that I noticed is it's different, you have all these side bars right here. I don't understand, I never seen this before. What are these?

Kate: It's actually a latch bar lower anchors and -- for children and it's what latch stands for. I see you are familiar with that.

Daddy Troy: But the latch -- you don't have this kind of bar?

Kate: We created it for ease of use, and by saying ease of use we have the premium latch connectors right here that the thick part on the top always, which you are looking at right now always has to be on the top when you latched onto anchor.

Daddy Troy: Sure.

Kate: So this is in a forward facing position and as you can see, it just slides very easily on this latch bar. So you just click it in when its going in the rear facing mode, we need this to be this way and now it would inside of that way. So, we actually have a latch bar coming underneath the seat and the latch slides very easily where they can switch places, but it has a secondary feature tube because it's pretty strong structure and so is part of the energy managing system on our seats, you have the stiff structure of the seat base, I mean the seat shell, but you also have this metal bar right here that on the side impact crash could add to that safety.

Daddy Troy: This is the back of the car seat. Tell me about this threaded -- here. What does it do?

Kate: It's actually there for this plastic piece right here to move up and down on as you can see.

Daddy Troy: Now these straps that go over the baby's shoulders?

Kate: Correct. And in a rear facing mode, they need to be at or below the shoulder and in the forward facing mode they need to be at or slightly above the shoulders and so in order to change the height of these.

Daddy Troy: But she is telling of pain. In my car if you see they have to actually take it out and strap everything.

Kate: And that can take actually a lot of time and when you take them out, sometimes you forget which hold you are supposed to go back into.

Daddy Troy: Right right.

Kate: So, you don't have to wrestle with that. The other nice thing --

Daddy Troy: In this you don't have to worry about. It's not a painless one.

Kate: It's not a pain because you can install your car seat and know that it's there good, and as your child is growing this knob right here is all you have to turn to change the height.

Daddy Troy: -- getting tighter and tighter, right?

Kate: Yeah.

Daddy Troy: Okay. Thanks very much for telling us about the Boulevard CS from Britax and then we'll see next time in Gear Daddy and week along at dadlabs.com.