When Amanda Kenny DeAngelis went to get her daughter Mila out of her rear-facing car seat, she discovered something alarming: the Britax seat was close to catching fire.
"This is my baby's car seat, smoking, because there is a mirror on the back of the seat so I can see her," she said in a video posted to Facebook. "I just took her out of the seat and smelled smoke and saw smoke coming up. It was caused by the sun's reflection into the car seat."
DeAngelis added that Britax responded immediately, but she hasn't heard back from the mirror's retailer, Eddie Bauer.
"Thank god I made a two-second stop and found this before something happened," she said. "I've used car seats with mirrors with all my kids — never have I experienced this."
As rare as a fire-related issue with these mirrors might be, it is worth noting that there are other, more common, risks involved with using those popular car seat mirrors, even if the goal is to better see your baby while in the vehicle.
They not only create unsafe distractions to parent drivers — they might lose focus on the road ahead while checking on their child — but experts maintain the mirrors could be dangerous in the event of an accident. Anything not permanently affixed to the car or car seat — such as those that attach to the rear-seat headrest — can become projectiles in a crash and, thus, shouldn't be in an infant's vicinity in the vehicle.
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