General Motors and Ford provide anchoring systems in the centre rear in many of their models to secure safety seats, according to a research report by Consumer Reports posted on its website. If seats made by companies such as Graco Children's Products and Evenflo can't be installed using such a system, parents can sometimes use seat belts to make it secure, says Jamie Schaefer-Wilson, author of the Consumer Reports' guide to childproofing and safety, who was not involved in the study.

Some seats 'will fit better in the centre where we recommend, and some might not fit a certain car at all', says Schaefer-Wilson. 'You need to make sure the car seat you buy fits both your child and your vehicle. It is a little trickier than it looks.'

Child seats can reduce the risk of a fatal injury by 71 per cent for infants and 54 per cent for toddlers, according to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. In 2006, 452 children under five were killed in the US. Thirty-five per cent of those who died in car crashes were unrestrained, the agency says.

'Although placement in any rear seating position provides excellent protection for young children in child restraint systems, those in the centre rear have the lowest risk of injury,' writes Michael Kallan, the study's lead author.

Children should ride in a rear-facing car seat until they are at least a year old, according to the American Academy of Paediatrics. After that, the doctors' group advised they be placed in a safety seat until the adult seat belt fits correctly, usually when they reach 1.44 metres tall. All children should ride in the back seat until they are 13, the academy recommends. Bloomberg

Students at core of Triumph mark

A Triumph Daytona 675 recently reached 253km/h (158.7mph) at Britain's Bruntingthorpe Proving Ground on biofuel produced from windfall apples by A-level students.

Devised by Rupert Paul of Bike magazine, Project Fast Fruit aimed to convert and run a high-performance vehicle on biofuel using only basic equipment. The fuel was produced in a chemistry lab as part of an A-level project by students from the Prince William School in Oundle, Northamptonshire.

Triumph Motorcycles lent the scheme a Daytona 675 (above) and its final run was the result of four months of hard work: the school fermented and distilled about 6,000 crushed apples and Bike modified the Daytona's engine to run on bioethanol.

'Surprisingly little modification was required - just a remap of the fuel injection system,' the marque says. 'The engine was then tested thoroughly using commercially available E85 [85 per cent ethanol] with very encouraging results.' The project then moved to testing using the students' fuel before the final run.

The Triumph sets a record for a production bike on home-brewed fuel, says Paul. 'Achieving biofuel is a buzzword, with the [British] government setting a target for all petrol and diesel to contain a minimum 5 per cent of biofuel by 2010,' he says.

'They are still questionable from an environmental point of view, but biofuels are here to stay, and this experiment was exploring how much power we can extract from them.'

All Triumph motorcycles are designed for optimum performance with non-ethanol fuel, but are compatible with E10 (10 per cent ethanol), says Triumph Motorcycles spokeswoman Andrea Friggi.

'We're investigating making all models compatible with E25 fuel, so while this is a fun experiment it does have a serious side and we're looking forward to reviewing the results,' she says.

Prince William School's head of chemistry, Anton McAleese, says the Triumph project was interesting. 'It's important that industry recognises the skills and creativity that our students can offer,' he says. 'Further, it's often young people today who are the most concerned about the future of our environment, so it's a topic close to their hearts.' Newspress