As a testing organization with 73 years of experience, Consumer Reports has often come across products that fail our tests but do so only intermittently, not every time. That was the case most recently with the Orbit Infant System, a car-seat-and-stroller combination whose carrier detached from its base in two of six simulated 30-mph frontal crash tests. Readers of such a report may wonder how intermittent failures arise, and what they mean for consumers trying to make a decision about whether or not a product is safe. This blog addresses those questions and cites three recent examples to explain why we generally take such failures very seriously.

Read the rest of this post on our Safety blog.