Car Seats suck

Child car seats are a strange industry. Can you think of another product, that is designed to save lives, that is required by law, that 80-98% of people can’t install correctly (depending what source you believe)? The government requires me to buy one of these, requires me to leave my child in it all times, but has no requirements about making the product clear enough to use that it does any good. Seems a little insane, no? I like to think I am well above the average citizen when it comes to this sort of thing, but I really don’t know. Maybe I’m part of the huge majority on this, and I am setting up Muttrox Jr. for a quick exit from this world.

Some day there will be a massive class action suit about this. The legal situation is already crazy. When we took Muttrox Jr. home from the hospital for the first time, we were of course terrified that we had installed it wrong. We asked the nurses to look it over. They refused. They are not legally allowed to give advice or help. Presumably if they did that and there was an incident the hospital would be liable. Strangely though, they can just refuse to hand over the infant because the car seat is unsafe. So you can start pulling straps at random until the refusal is lifted. Bizzare. We had a similar experience when we rented a car, and the seat wasn’t like any model we had ever seen before. The folks at the counter didn’t know anything and weren’t allowed to tell us if they did. They also had no instruction manual, and were even missing the locking clip that all seats have. Stay the hell away from Dollar Rent-a-car!

Then there is the civil liberty aspect to this. I believe every state has laws prescribing car seat usage at a very young age, up to 2 years. Some have a lot more. In Georgia, you need to use various devices until they are six. (Take a look at the link. Looks like it was designed by someone who sends conspiracy spam in their spare time. These are my tax dollars at work?)

The issue here is the role of parents to make their own choices for themselves and their family, versus the common safety. It’s a give-and-take. Our society leans these days towards the common safety. Without going off on another rant, it’s thinks like this that make so many people identify themselves as libetarian, regardless of how they vote. Anyhow — the point is that since seat belts save enough lives, the safety issue overrides the parental role. With car seats, the logic is the same. But I don’t believe it. I never have. I’ve never believed that a child over a few years old derives all that much benefit from car seats. More than that, I just don’t like it. I don’t like talking to my son in the back seat. Many of my best memories from my own childhood are driving with my father and talking with him, in the front seat. DeborahTannen claims that men communicate about big issues best in setting like a car, where they are together but not directly facing each other, and based on my own experience I believe it. It saddens me to know how old my boy will be before I can put him up front.

And where’s the evidence? Steven Leavitt, of Freakonomics fame, has an article in the NY Times today, and a follow-up blog entry. It fits right into my pet peeve. Clearly, his conclusions are not warranted from his statistical evidence, but it also points to the need for more research. If car seats are empirically shown not to significantly help older children, where is the justification for these laws?