Every car sold in America has LATCH anchors: the metal bars a child seat clips to instead of using the seat belt. The presence of the anchors is mandatory. Whether a human being can reach them is not.
IIHS rates that separately, on whether the anchors are buried in the seat crease, how much force it takes to attach a seat, and whether the top tether is somewhere findable. Across 2,186 rated vehicles, 522 come back Poor or Marginal.
| LATCH rating | Vehicles |
|---|---|
| Acceptable | 944 |
| Good | 720 |
| Marginal | 484 |
| Poor | 38 |
This is not a crash test. Nothing here says a child is unsafe in any of these vehicles. It measures whether a tired parent in a car park can get the seat in correctly on the first attempt — which matters, because a seat installed wrong is the common failure mode, not a seat that breaks.
The split by brand is unusually wide
Most safety measures cluster. This one does not.
| Brand | Rated | Poor or Marginal | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| RAM | 23 | 23 | 100% |
| GMC | 45 | 28 | 62% |
| Chevrolet | 151 | 77 | 51% |
| Ford | 134 | 60 | 45% |
| Jeep | 69 | 28 | 41% |
| Volvo | 120 | 3 | 3% |
| Audi | 118 | 3 | 3% |
| Mercedes-Benz | 53 | 0 | 0% |
| Mitsubishi | 42 | 0 | 0% |
Every single RAM assessed came back Poor or Marginal. At the other end, Mercedes-Benz and Mitsubishi have no failures at all across 95 rated vehicles between them.
Why trucks do badly at this
The top of that table is almost entirely full-size trucks and truck-based SUVs, and the reason is structural rather than negligent.
A pickup rear bench is designed to fold flat for cargo. That mechanism puts hardware where the anchor bars would otherwise sit, and pushes the bars deeper into the seat crease. The top tether, which stops a forward-facing seat rotating, often ends up on the back of the seat behind a folding panel rather than on the parcel shelf where a saloon puts it.
Mitsubishi and Mercedes-Benz share nothing except that their rear seats were designed around passengers first.
What to do with it
If you are buying a family car, this is a five-minute test you can run yourself in the car park, and it does not require any data at all: bring the child seat you actually own and fit it before you agree anything.
Two things are worth checking specifically. Whether you can feel the lower anchors without moving the seat cushion by hand, and whether the top tether point is visible without a manual. If either takes more than a minute on the forecourt, it will take longer every time in real life.
The rating is a property of the design, not the individual car, so it applies equally to a used example. It also has nothing to do with how the vehicle performs in a crash — for that, the rear passenger results are the more relevant measure, and they follow completely different brand lines.
Frequently asked questions
What does a Poor LATCH rating actually mean?
It means the anchors are hard to use, not that they are unsafe. IIHS rates how deeply the lower anchors sit in the seat crease, how much force attaching a seat takes, and whether the top tether is easy to find. A seat installed incorrectly is the common real-world failure, which is what the rating targets.
Why do pickups score so badly?
Their rear benches are designed to fold flat for cargo. That mechanism occupies the space where anchor bars would sit and pushes them deeper into the crease, while the top tether often ends up behind a folding panel rather than on an open shelf.
Which brands rate best for child seat anchors?
Among brands with at least 20 rated vehicles, Mercedes-Benz and Mitsubishi have no Poor or Marginal ratings at all, and Volvo and Audi sit at 3%. The market average is 24%.
Denis Kataev is a serial solopreneur and the founder of ForCar. With 15+ years in software engineering and 10 years in SEO, he builds data-driven products end to end — backed by a sharp eye for design. At ForCar he mines proprietary vehicle datasets, turning raw numbers into buying advice you can actually trust.
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