I heard back from our local police station (division32 in Toronto, 416-808-3219) and found that they were booking car seat installation verifications a month in advance. So since I am not that organized and didn’t want to wait until after the baby was born I decided to go with a private company. The police told me to call the Canadian Car Seat Installation Centre. I had also heard about this same place through BabyAndMeFitness. They provide “free inspections”, however I suspect that most of their installations are able to find something wrong, but then I have heard that 80-90% of car seats are installed incorrectly. In this case the angle of the car seat back was not at 45 degrees (it was more like 60 degrees: they said the indicator on the seat is not very accurate) so they asked if I wanted them to install it for me. I agreed and I feel better now that it has been installed by someone who does this all the time. Of course, I had to sign a liability form, but that was not surprising.

It cost $35 CDN plus tax for the install.

I also asked about the recent Consumer’s Report about the safety of car seats and they referred me to a Toronto Star article “OPP contradicts Consumer Reports on child seat safety“. Which I found very reassuring. I know I am a worrier and that I don’t always put risk into perspective, but sometimes we don’t have enough data on things and I can blame it on the hormones too right? It reminds me of a Time article on “Why we worry about the wrong things” which looked at the probability and impact of everyday risks. e.g. “Shoppers still look askance at a bag of spinach for fear of E. coli bacteria while filling their carts with fat-sodden French fries and salt-crusted nachos”: Heart disease is still the number one killer.