Thursday, August 25, 2005
Social Engineering: Your Mileage May Vary
Glenn caught up with us on the whole SUV issue. Even if you saw his original post, it’s worth returning as he has added massive amounts of links and reader e-mails, focused largely on the safety constraints issue we keep bringing up whenever the “why should anyone need an SUV or minivan” crowd rears its ignorant head.
We’re getting along with the Sentra for now. However, to go to Plymouth last week, we put the stroller in the trunk, and that’s become its new home. It lived in the van, but since that was supposed to be hauled away for possible repair…
The stroller takes the entire trunk. All of it. Barely fits. I had to spend several minutes completely rearranging the tools and such (Deb observed “you’d be a great person to get stranded with."), and had to remove a little of it. The trunk as it was would hold several bags of groceries, or something like a jumbo box of diapers and a few bags.
So. No more trunk.
The car seat takes up almost half of the back seat, in the middle, which is both easier and safer than to one side. If I am alone, there’s plenty of room for stuff, though enough of it and I’m still working around the presence of the car seat. If we are all in the car, we have the space on either side of the car seat, and maybe a little room at Deb’s feet. We’ve had Sadie pretty well surrounded by stuff a couple times.
Now add another kid.
No more room in the back seat. Maybe a diaper bag or two on the floor, but that’s it. They are required to be in car seats or boosters until an absurd age or size, which takes that much more room.
Granted, the specific item taking up the trunk now needn’t remain there, but space there remains limited for stuff that isn’t people. In the longer run, it only barely computes for two small kids. Never mind if there are twins lurking in there, or if there’s a third later. Heck, I’ve seen what it looks like when my sister, brother-in-law, two kids, and all their stuff for traveling are in a minivan. It’s full.
We’re not in the days of the baby riding on mom’s lap in the front seat anymore. All the more so with those dangerous airbags saving us from ourselves. We’re not in the days of the kids tumbling around the back seat any which way. We survived it when we were kids. Ditto for riding in the backs of pickups, as we did many times. That was even kind of a treat. Was it safe? Probably not. Should we encourage people to try to be safer? Sure, no harm in that. Should there be massive regulations propping up the car seat and SUV industries? Not on my planet; maybe on yours.
On my planet, there’s the market and the minds people were born with to weigh costs monetary and otherwise.