Replace car seat in low speed impact?

mstavish79

Monday night on my way home from work I was rear ended at a very low speed.  The traffic was pretty much stopped and the lady behind me just ran into me- lovely.  Needless to say at the time I was pretty shaken up and hoping everything was with the baby.  After sitting in the ER for nearly 3 hours we finally had someone check the heart beat. It was a long wait just because I was so anxious and pregnancy hormones got the best of me.  Thankfully we heard the heart and they did a quick ultrasound.  Baby was moving- what a relief!  Anyway, I was wondering if anyone has experienced this and if so did you replace your car seat?  All of my research on the internet is fuzzy- Graco says replace it in any accident but the insurance company seems to be saying that if there was little to no damage to the car (which is the case) they won't pay for it because it's not needed. If we need to replace it I will, even if the insurance won't cover it.  I was not at fault in the accident and of course the driver of the other car didn't have her insurance card with her and now is giving me the run around about filing the claim.  She is saying that she is in the process of switching insurance companies and didn't want to report it but would pay out of pocket for any damage to my car.  Needless to say I reported it to my insurance company because that's just what you do. I don't need her trying to sue me down the road.  I swear- people!

smacb

We got rear ended and after researching the issue did not replace the car seat.  We have a Britax Marathon and Britax had guidelines for when you need to replace the seat.  We followed those.   When in doubt, I'd replace it.

Artslvr

Sorry that happened, how scary!!

MrsNJSwimmer

I had a similar experience in August, and the people on the phone at the ins co said they would inspect it when they inspected my car (I did have minor damage to my bumper), but when I got there, the guy said he would replace it.  This was GEICO.  We were getting to the point of moving up to a convertible anyway, so I just went and replaced it with that.

tracy042206

smacb:

We got rear ended and after researching the issue did not replace the car seat.  We have a Britax Marathon and Britax had guidelines for when you need to replace the seat.  We followed those.   When in doubt, I'd replace it.

 

Ditto this

vtmezzo

I got into a similar minor accident when DS was 4 months old. We went by guidelines we found on the internet and did not end up replacing - I had no idea that insurance would even cover that. Although we've already switched to a Britax Marathon for him, with #2 on the way I'm wondering if I should buy a new infant seat. Hmmmm...