Children tend to be victims of road accidents more often than is the case for adults. Children made up 2,5% of the total number of road fatalities in the EU countries in 2015 and about 15% of the world? population. They are at about a sixth regarding the risk of dying in a road accident of the average member of the population across the EU as a whole.[1]
The European Union uses the R44.04 [2] homologation standard to assess child restraint systems (CRS), but in 2013 a new regulation was implemented called Enhanced Child Restraint Systems (ECRS) or UNECE R-129[3] The first step of this regulation, called Phase 1 or I-Size, adds new performance criterion and improved the requirements for the CRS related to safety by introducing side-impact protection, classification based on stature not mass, use of Isofix and mandatory rearward facing until 15 months. Both regulations have been used simultaneously since 2013.
In this paper a comparison study was carried out to analyse the differences between both protocols and regulation requirements in order to assess the benefits and impacts of this new standard.