Won’t Someone Think of the Children?
Thoreau goes off on child car seat laws, apparently without realizing just how burdensome those laws have become. These laws are, in my mind, an excellent example of how safety regulations can easily go amok and do more harm than good. The problem isn’t with the idea that car seats are safer than no car seats, even if we’re talking about a six or seven year old child (never mind a twelve year old child). In fact, I have not the slightest doubt that, on average, car seats make children safer.
The problem is, though, that human beings are not numbers. These rigid and absolutist regulations don’t remotely allow for individual parents to undertake their own analysis of whether in a given case it may be best to do without a car seat. They do not remotely account for the unintended consequences of forcing parents to spend hundreds of dollars on car seats for children as old as 12 and then forcing those same parents to put all such children in car seats each and every time the child is in the car.
All that matters for purposes of these laws is that, on average, children under 12 are safer when they sit in car seats – it does not matter whatsoever how much safer (if at all) an individual child is, as each instance of a child in a car without a safety seat is treated as equally dangerous. It does not matter if, as a result of safety seat laws, parents are unable to car pool their children (since few parents are going to regularly keep their cars stocked with more safety seats than they have children). It does not matter if this means that parents can no longer have Uncle Phil pick the kids up from school, utterly destroying the flexibility of a parent’s schedule. It does not matter if all of this inflexibility (particularly when combined with other child safety laws) destroys the spontaneity of a child’s schedule, hurts their socialization, and encourages more time playing video games online than playing whiffle ball at their friend’s house across town.
Finally, because they treat humans as mere numbers and statistics, hese one-size-fits-all child safety laws ignore occasions in which the requirement that all children below a certain age or below a certain height and weight be in car seats actively makes a situation more dangerous. As noted above, these laws make car pooling or having a trusted friend or relative pick up a child difficult-to-impossible. This of course means that parents have to spend more time on the road and drive more miles. Beyond any additional environmental effects of driving more miles, these requirements increase the likelihood that a given parent will have an accident in the first place since, obviously, more miles driven = greater likelihood of an accident.
And what about the situation of the agitated infant, a situation that my wife and I have had to encounter plenty? Here you have a wailing infant who needs to be held to calm down. Listening to one’s child screaming while driving is, to say the least, a major distraction – the parents, include the driver, trying to console the baby even as their heart is breaking because the child is so unhappy. Major distractions of course increase accident risks. But so does pulling over to the side of the road on the highway so that you can rock the infant back to calm; and the longer that you’re by the side of the road, the greater the risk of an accident. And sometimes, even once you’ve got your infant calmed down, she will go right back to being upset as soon as you try to get her in the car seat. Indeed, she may even make it almost impossible to put her in the car seat (my wife once spent 45 minutes in the daycare parking lot before she was able to get our daughter in the car seat, although since she was alone, safety seat laws were not the reason why this was necessary).
In such a situation, what is safer? A. Having the child calm down by being held by her mother in the passenger seat (or, as likely, the back seat); B. Continue to drive with the baby wailing at the top of her lungs while both parents do everything they can to calm her down; or C. Pull over to the side of the road until the baby is calm enough to go back in her car seat?
The answer? It doesn’t matter – the law says you have to choose B or C, whether or not A would be the best response in a given situation. And so, B or C is the option that we have always chosen.
This isn’t to say that I think child car seat laws are the end of the world or anything like that – on the scale of stupid laws, they rank pretty low on my list – just that they help illustrate how blunt an instrument the law can often be, creating one-size-fits-all solutions to problems that often may be best solved by people with the best knowledge of a given situation. A more flexible set of laws that understood that in some cases a safety seat isn’t really the best option would make a world of sense.
We used to ride to town in the bed of my uncle’s truck.
I think that would be considered “child abuse” today.Report
This story of Nick Gillespie’s is appropriate, I think.
http://www.reason.com/news/show/30296.html
Here’s the 2nd paragraph from the story (after the opener which describes the bike prep Nick sees a neighbor kid engaging in):
As he peddled off in his body armor, his father appeared, coffee mug in one hand. “You be careful,” he called after his son. And then the father, who like me is in his 30s, turned my way and added, somewhat sheepishly, “I remember riding my bike barefoot in the rain. Things sure are different nowadays with the kids.”
The whole thing is worth reading.Report
When my dad was growing up, him and his friends would sit on the front poor and breathe deeply when the DDT trucks came by and sprayed sweet-smelling insecticide. They knew to watch out for one guy on the block who always drove drunk – but back then it was merely another form of bad driving. My dad started driving without a license when he was 12. He’s had dentures since he was 14 because he played hockey without a face shield or a helmet. And guess what else? A bunch of guys he knew died aged 16-20 in stupid accidents.
It’s nice to put on the rose- or sepia-colored glasses every once in a while, but it’s hard to argue in favor of childhood injuries and pesticides.Report
“It’s nice to put on the rose- or sepia-colored glasses every once in a while, but it’s hard to argue in favor of childhood injuries and pesticides.”
Could I spin this around and say, instead, “we’re going to pass laws to make sure that you kids don’t do what I did when I was your age”?
I mean, sure for bike helmet laws. But it also seems to be the driving force behind, say, marijuana prohibition as well.Report
Similarly, speed limits are rigid and absolutist because they don’t differentiate by weather conditions and driver skill. Motorcycle helmets and seat belts too. Same goes for restricting Blood Alcohol Content to 0.08 while driving – or 0.00 for drivers under 21.
Every large organization treats human beings like numbers. I could see getting worked up over sending them off to die in Iraq or not caring that they have no health insurance. But car seat laws are hardly too onerous – especially since laws like California’s give you quite a bit of discretion for children aged 1-6.Report
Well, regarding the crying baby in car-seat situation of which I am only too familiar, and setting the law aside for a moment, my advice is to let them learn that you will not pick them up out of the carseat. They are going to have to just deal with it and sooth themselves. Once our daughter resigned herself to this fact, we were all much happier.
I think the laws for infants actually make sense but as children grow older – school age, I’d say – it becomes kind of silly. I mean, fine, suggest that a kids should sit in a booster. But make it the law?
Sheesh.Report
This is one of your most inane posts ever. Yes, let’s create a situation where parents are empowered to decide for themselves which child safety laws to obey. Then, when stopped by police for violating the law, they can explain how the exception they have created is justified in this case. (“We’re car pooling the children, officer, that’s why we have five of our neighbors’ kids crammed in the back, and only two with seat belts.” “Ma’am, I understand. No problem. Proceed.” Or, “Yes, my child is only 11, but he’s large for his age.” “Yes, I see that sir. Sorry I stopped you.” ) And how lame is your grudging statement that, yes, “on average,” car seats make children safer. What is that supposed to mean? These laws have saved tens of thousands of children, and they aren’t intended to have silly loopholes built in. Live with it. Just imagine your kind of thinking applied in other areas of the law that lead to the occasional inconvenience.Report
He may grow up to yell at police like Professor Gates! Then he’ll get arrested! Then he’ll be forced to drink beer!
DO YOU WANT YOUR CHILD DRINKING BEER????Report
I’m not sure where you get your data that child car seats have saved tens of thousands of lives. I’d love to see it if you have it. Here’s a link to a view that they haven’t done that much good.
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/rest.90.1.158Report
Unfit parents will not become fit by law, they might obey a few laws, but the all the risks they subject their children to will be undetected, for the most part, until it’s too late. Fit parents will make sure their children are safe, as much as they can.Report
I had just the opposite experience. When my daughter wouldn’t stop crying and go to sleep at night, we’d put her in the car seat and drive. One time, we didn’t even get to the end of our cul-de-sac and she was sound asleep. Usually, once around the block was all it took.
More seriously, I’m fascinated by the issue of whether everything that is immoral (or stupid, or sub-optimal, or …) should be illegal, assuming that 51% of the population think it’s immoral, stupid, etc. Clearly, there are some things that are appropriately illegal, such as burglary, murder and the like. But how does a non-sectarian country decide what is stupid, in the minds of a majority, but legal? Smoking? Drinking white zinfandel? Picking your nose in public? Watching WWF? Taking 9 items through the 7 items or less line in the grocery store? Voting for Rocky the Flying Squirrel for county sheriff? “If the law says that, sir, then the law is an ass.” Mr. Beadle, Great Expectations, I think.
Everything that is immoral should not also be illegal (this not being Iran,) but many things that are immoral are illegal and should be. What criteria should be used to decide?Report
While I favor these laws in general, I think the carpooling point has merit. Another issue is that these laws also make it very difficult to travel with three or more of your own children (most cars will not accommodate more than two child seats). You need not share the rightwing “birth dearth” paranoia to object if the government makes it substantially more difficult to have more than two children in a household.Report
It all went to hell in a handbasket with the smoking bans.
Hell in a handbasket, I say.
Seriously.Report
no it was when they outlawed lead based paint.
no wait when those damn do gooders tried to stop acid rain.
or was it when they put the hammer down on drunk driving. eh whatever.Report
Zoning laws.Report
damn local governments.Report
No seriously. Zoning laws. I’m going to write about this as soon as I’m done with the research.Report
Go for it E.D! Give those bloody NIMBY’s hell!Report
One thing I should make clear: I’m not advocating the full repeal of all child safety laws or even all child car seat laws, although I do think those laws need to be reined in quite a bit. At some point, kids need to be able to be kids.
My point here is just that legislation is a very blunt instrument that has a lot of negative side effects that are not susceptible to a ready cost-benefit analysis in pure numbers terms. Yet the push for safety laws often ignores these side effects, essentially taking the view that almost any cost is acceptable as long as the result of the legislation is some marginally decreased risk of death.
This leads to idiotic laws like the CPSIA and requirements that 79-pound children have to wear car seats.
Again, though, I’m not pushing for the repeal of all child safety laws, just asking that we put an end to this legislative rationale that anything that even marginally can be said to improve child safety is worth doing, no matter how it may affect children and their parents in an individual situation.Report
As a country we would benefit if high school kids, at the minimum , had to take a hard course in statistics. So much of our public panics are based on a lack of understanding about stats and also science in general.
The issue, as i think you are saying Mark, is where to draw the lines on safety. to often this gets turned into What about the Children!!!! vs. LIBERTY!!!! FREEDOM!!!!!Report
Talk to the teacher’s unions about that first part.Report
Sometimes fears over safety turn into Global Wars on Terror, too. And build up things like Departments of Homeland Security, or Patriot Acts.
Safety, security – these can’t be guaranteed or really enforced. But they should be encouraged.Report
It’s when fears over safety turn into 55-gallon drums full of toothpaste tubes that we need to ask, seriously, “are we safer?” and having that question answered with the question “do you want children to die?” gives the game away, as far as I’m concerned, that we aren’t, particularly.Report
There are always messed-up cases that come out of making law what should just be common sense. I also wonder whether it isn’t often the case that lawmakers get confused about the notion that making a law isn’t just a high-powered public information campaign, which it seems to me would be a better place to start before going the criminalization route. But if that has been tried and there is still a clear problem of people not using carseats, then I think it’s not crazy to start looking at a law. Of course, writing the law so that nine year-olds have to sit in car seats is just head-poundingly dumb. but there’s always going to be the problem of dumb legislators — that’s just not going away.Report