Safety Madness Strikes Again
Maybe this is nothing more than a sign that my cynicism is reaching unhealthy levels, but nothing about this surprised me one bit:
Even a quick look at the FARS data reveals a striking result: among children 2 and older, the death rate is no lower for those traveling in any kind of car seat than for those wearing seat belts. There are many reasons, of course, that this raw data might be misleading. Perhaps kids in car seats are, on average, in worse wrecks. Or maybe their parents drive smaller cars, which might provide less protection.
But no matter what you control for in the FARS data, the results don’t change. In recent crashes and old ones, in big vehicles and small, in one-car crashes and multiple-vehicle crashes, there is no evidence that car seats do a better job than seat belts in saving the lives of children older than 2. (In certain kinds of crashes—rear-enders, for instance—car seats actually perform worse.) The real answer to why child auto fatalities have been falling seems to be that more and more children are restrained in some way. Many of them happen to be restrained in car seats, since that is what the government mandates, but if the government instead mandated proper seat-belt use for children, they would likely do just as well / without the layers of expense, regulation and anxiety associated with car seats.
Now I’m not about to start a crusade to end car-seat use, but we have got to get a grip on ourselves. Really. Because the booster seat thing has gotten right out of control. Here’s a map showing the current laws. In Wyoming you have to be nine years old and weigh eighty pounds before you can legally ride in a car without a booster seat. That’s just nuts. It imposes a huge cost for a marginal--or nonexistent--increase in safety.
And hey, don’t forget...if you’re under twelve, you can’t ride in the front seat because another government mandated safety device might kill you.
Being a kid just isn’t what it used to be.
That other government-mandated safety device would not have been an issue if the Ohio auto salvage industry association had succeeded in getting the legislation they wanted passed. It called for a ban on the sale of automobiles containing explosive devices powered by a chemical known to be a carcinogen and suspected to be a mutagen. They were outlobbied by the insurance industry, which knew that damage claims resulting from the bomb bags would be less than the claims they prevented.
Posted by triticale on 07/13 at 07:35 PM-
Posted by Paul Burgess on 07/14 at 09:07 AM
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