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Car Seats as Contraception

journals.uchicago.edu

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Re: Car Seats as Contraception

#181

Post by Noumenon72 »

ryandrake wrote: post #166
JonathanRaines wrote: post #145

> We estimate that these laws prevented fatalities of 57 children in car crashes in 2017 but reduced total births by 8,000 that year These two options are not equivalent. I will take 8,000 3rd children not being born over 57 kids dying in car crashes every time.

You’re getting downvoted, but a win is a win, and reduced birthrate/fertility is a huge and clear win on the planetary scale. Fewer people = less waste/pollution = smaller ecological impact = less competition over finite resources. If we find policies that reduce birthrates, we should always implement them.

This policy only reduces the birthrates of wealthy people who follow laws, so it's self-defeating, in that the future generations of poor people who don't care about laws also won't care about reducing their ecological impact.

Re: Car Seats as Contraception

#182

Post by gizmo686 »

nradov wrote: post #151
bradley13 wrote: post #78

Wow, talk about the law of unintended effects! Without going into the specifics of car seats, I do think we overemphasize safety. The article mentions saving 57 children. How much are 57 lives worth? The answer is not infinite - a life has a numeric value, ask any insurance company. Every safety regulation ought to pass a cold-blooded cost/benefit analysis. Few of them do.

Actually most federal agencies do conduct a cold-blooded cost/benefit analysis when considering new safety regulations. The statistical value of a human life is around $10M. The problem is that they don't consider second-order effects as a "cost" within that framework. And realistically there's no way for regulators to estimate those effects. https://journalistsresource.org/economics/value-statistical-...

The Department of Health and Human Services releases a figure every year. Their current estimate ranges from $6.6 million to $21.5 million.

Note also, that we also often talk about statistically life years and statisicsl quality life years; both of which would value the lives of infants higher than an average life.

https://aspe.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2d83af582...

Re: Car Seats as Contraception

#183

Post by extraduder_ire »

kelnos wrote: post #95
SAI_Peregrinus wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also usually just turn off the passenger-side airbag. I know there's been a button on every car I've owned to do so, for when you've got something heavy in the front seat that isn't a passenger.

I've never had a car where you could disable the passenger-side airbag. We did have a car like that in the 90s, but it didn't come that way from the factory: my mother had a mostly-irrational fear of them (she was on the shorter side, but not so short that it could actually be a danger for her if it deployed), so we somehow got an aftermarket mod that let her disable it when she was riding in that seat. Of course, sh…

Check the area near the hinge on the front passanger-side door, there should be a labelled thing you can turn to disable it. (using a key or screwdriver, similar to the rear childlocks)

It might be due to me being in Europe, but every car I've ever seen with an airbag for that seat has had it along with a sticker warning about it in the sunvisor area.

Re: Car Seats as Contraception

#184

Post by angmarsbane »

throwway120385 wrote: post #7
mullingitover wrote: post #2

> We show that laws mandating use of child car safety seats significantly reduce birth rates, as many cars cannot fit three child seats in the back seat. Wouldn't the real cause of the depressed birthrates be the requirement to own a car in order to have children? If you aren't a slave to your vehicle there's no problem with the available space for car seats.

If you aren't a slave to your car, you likely live in a walkable area where the cost of a 4-bedroom apartment or house is going to be pretty high. I'm not saying you can't raise kids in a 2 or 3 bedroom apartment, and when I lived in apartments many families had kids in a 1-bedroom apartment, but it's very tight and many people would consider it a significant hardship for both the kids and the parents. I would also a…

This is IF you can find a 3 or 4 bedroom apartment in an American city. The job centers mostly build studios, 1 and 2 bedrooms if they build anything at all.

Re: Car Seats as Contraception

#185

Post by agensaequivocum »

manwe150 wrote: post #109
namibj wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehhhhh, what's your problem with booster seats? Those are just to get the shoulders into the design zone as needed for the typical 3-point seat belt. It's based on size (shoulder height measured in sitting position) not age. I think some 5-point seat belts allow a much wider design zone so won't need boosters by the time the children outgrow the front-facing bucket seat.

Kids want to get out of them into adult seats as soon as they can. Actual comfort not relevant.

With 6 kids, I have not really had this issue.

Re: Car Seats as Contraception

#186

Post by agensaequivocum »

beerandt wrote: post #29
mothballed wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a vehicle with no back seats when my child was in a car seat. It was great because I could attend to them while driving. Since there were no back seats they could not cite me as it was an exception to the law. I'm not convinced it's actually safer to have kids in the back. Sure they're safer in an accident, but when I drove another car with rear seats I found myself constantly looking back to deal with the chil…

This common sense mindset would invalidate so many 'safety' laws and I'm all for it. Studies make so many invalid assumptions (and usually don't even state them) to force the data / statistics to fit clean a/b or null testing. But to put a dent in the status quo, we really need a greenlight to just dump however many kids in the back again, no matter the number of kids or seatbelts. And before anyone gut reacts to thi…

Yes please.

Re: Car Seats as Contraception

#187

Post by agensaequivocum »

steanne wrote: post #56
bentt wrote: post #34

Let’s just focus on how cars and car culture are reducing birth rates. Nobody wants to chuck their kids into the back seat without a carseat any more. Laws aren’t the problem.

back seat? we were loose in the pickup truck!

Boomers took everything away from us.

Re: Car Seats as Contraception

#188

Post by brailsafe »

bombcar wrote: post #171
brailsafe wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly not as much as the U.S or Canada, but not as little as Tokyo or Netherlands. I found various cities easy to navigate without one, but they seemed oddly car-centric as well. Berlin is very car and very public transportation somehow

Public transit and kid/stroller public transit are very different beasts. Once you’ve had to lift a stroller into a “high” bus you’ll not want to do it anymore.

> Once you’ve had to lift a stroller into a “high” bus you’ll not want to do it anymore.

I imagine I'd agree, but is that related? You might have more niche knowledge that I'm not aware of in this context. In my city in Canada, all buses lower upon request

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