It Began With Saaaaaaaaaaaafety Seats

Eric Peters Autos ^ | October 13, 2020371318 | eric

[HartleyMBaldwin]

That photo reminds me of my brothers and me riding seated on the tailgate of the station wagon with our legs hanging off the back, in southern California, 1965.

[TexasGator]

"In NY, FL and most other states doesn’t matter if the car is a 1920 or a 2020 if kids 12 or under ride in it they must wear seat belts and younger kids must be put in car seats." Florida statute: (d) The requirements of this section do not apply to motor vehicles that are not required to be equipped with safety belts under federal law.

[TexasGator]

“That photo reminds me of my brothers and me riding seated on the tailgate of the station wagon with our legs hanging off the back, in southern California, 1965.”

I used to sit out back exercising my colt before he was old enough to ride.

[Truthoverpower]

I have a 4 runner. that supposedly sees seven ; except for I have all my tools and crap in the back

and so when I go to take five or six kids to the YMCA

I just throw seats on top of all my tools and crap

and even the wife accepts that

it’s good aplerently because the seatbelts still work

Now look all last 1970s tapes - we do have to agree with seatbelts don’t we?

Lol. X. 3000. X. Lol. Lo double L. !!

[vpintheak]

There were seatbelts in the 70’s-80s but virtually no one wore them. I also spent a ton of time rolling around in the back of a van or pickup bed. No one batted an eye about it.
Mom said if all 6 of us kids would have had to be belted in and have car seats and all that junk, we never would have left the house! After having 4 myself, I agree, it was a terrible hassle that only made the nanny-staters happy.

[Beowulf9]

I still laugh at a stand up comic once saying when he grew up there were metal dashboards and no seatbelts. If there was a car accident they just hosed off the dashboard.

My father had an old sixties car he was very proud of and a small metal statue of St. Anthony, patron Saint of Travelers, on the dashboard. It was held there with a magnet (metal dash). He was telling my brother how that little statue would protect him on the road.

My brother piped up and said, ‘are you kidding? If we’re in an accident that thing will rocket to the back like a missile and if it hits either one of us were dead!’

I thought it was pretty funny.

[HartleyMBaldwin]

Probably not in city traffic, though.

[fireman15]

My dad was a master at using rope. He used to stack grass hay bales so high on his 3/4 ton Dodge Powerwagon flatbed so high that it barely made it under traffic lights. When we were kids he let my brother, sisters and I ride on the top of the load on the way home. My little brother was about 5. We all loved it! It felt like we were flying.

One time the load felt a little unstable and we were very disappointed that he would not let us ride the 20 miles home on top of the load. We all had to squeeze into the unseatbelted cab. But we hit a dip in the road on the way home and the truck started swaying back and forth and almost all the bales of grass hay ended up in the middle of a busy 4 lane road. We started throwing the bales back on the truck as fast as we could. A few of them broke open. We heard sirens coming our way. Dad through some rope over the mess and we got out of there as fast as we could and onto some side roads. An expensive ticket was narrowly avoided.

[Ex gun maker.]

I do. “Safer” and “Performance” are not just statistics.
Just got back from doing 2500 miles in a 2012 model car.
Hated every mile! Uncomfortable, car wanted to boss me with buzzers and bells, overly thick A pillars obscured my vision, too busy dash was not informative.
The only redeeming feature was cruse control which is needed as the cramped cabin gave me terrible leg cramps when I had to work the gas pedal.
So overly smooth and quiet even a short stint was enough to make me sleepy.
Almost felt like watching video of the road going by, disgusting.

We lose several people a year here in Nevada to falling asleep at the wheel.
Modern = Just too cushy.
All those nifty “Safety” features do not work well when a driver goes off a bridge or over an embankment, the air-bags only deploy once.

So modern “Performance” is based almost entirely on acceleration, and to a lesser extent braking. Numbers sound great, but in reality Sally Soccer-Mom is in over her head with a 250+ HP top-heavy SUV. Particularly when she depends on the cars features to save her rather than learning to DRIVE. But hey, as long as Madison Avenue can milk it for sales it’s all good. /s

For me “Performance” includes the FEEL of the car, vision, handling, and enjoyment. Ultimate numbers are less important.
As an example I just bought a vintage Lotus Europa, slow by todays standards with maybe 115 HP.
Thin fiberglass body, no air-bags or side-impact beams, only seats two, weighs about 1400 Lb., and the most “Modern” component is the mid-engine design. Yep, a “Death Trap” I have lusted after since 1972.
Cannot wait to get it home and on the road.

[cornfedcowboy]

My car seat as an infant was a laundry basket.

[fr_freak]

Seatbelts...I know libertarians can be whacky but what bizarre hill to die on.

I'm going to coin a new term for the type of fallacy you just demonstrated with this line. It is now called the "drama queen fallacy."

An objection to an idea, or an act, is not a great effort. You simply say "I don't think this is a great idea. It could lead to worse things in the future" and that is that. There is no reason for someone to interpret that objection as if it is akin to dying upon a hill in combat. "Hey I don't think this is a good idea" does not warrant "OMG! OMFG! You think this is a hill to die on?!?!?!?!?!?" Simple objections are the proper way to handle things, so that the silly ideas of the world don't escalate into really, really bad ideas, such as your government thinking it now has the authority to run every aspect of your life.

An example of "a hill to die on" being applied to an ideological position would be something like the 2nd Amendment protests, where, every time some communist congressman threatens to confiscate the nations firearms, hundreds or thousands of guys show up at the capital carrying AR-15s. THEN you might be justified in applying the "OMG a hill to die on" designation. You know, where an action confers some risk upon the person taking the action, rather than it just BEING SOMETHING SOMEONE OBJECTS TO.

The "hill to die on" comes later, after too many people decided that the simple objections, the ones without cost, were too embarrassing because they didn't want to seem like they were dying on a hill. Then, after enough failures to object without cost, suddenly you have your government taking actions which now have a great cost, and are threatening to do things which will end life as you now it. Gosh, it sure would have been nice if you had simply voiced your objection back when it would have been easy, but, hey, there was this guy that said "OMFG! OMFG! THIS is the hill you're willing to die on?"

Fighting against MANDATORY seatbelts (note the word "mandatory". No one has ever been against seatbelts being put in cars, or even used, just the "mandatory" nature of it) would have been a pushback against the idea that government had the authority to implement such directives, and treat the citizens like children to be coddled and chided, rather than as the source of all the true authority in a constitutional republic. But we didn't push back, and now the government thinks it is entitled to mandate every damn thing in the world. And how does it enforce violations of its evil nanny mandates? By putting you in a timeout in the corner? Nope - fines, jail time, and, damn them to hell, removal of the children from the custody of the parents, among other things.

[fr_freak]

My brother piped up and said, ‘are you kidding? If we’re in an accident that thing will rocket to the back like a missile and if it hits either one of us were dead!’

I get the joke, but your brother had the physics wrong. The sudden stop of an accident would make the metal statue shoot forward, not back, unless you got rear-ended hard enough to where it wouldn't matter what the statue was doing.

[outofsalt]

"The safety is that it kept me in my seat and not bothering my mother or father."

I warned all my kids of the dangers of distractions when driving with their friends; "Kids in the back seat cause accidents (and accidents in the back seat cause kids!)

[.44 Special]

We also had marbles, tops, kites, pocket knives, bb guns, and wrist rockets, cap guns, cap darts. All kinds of good stuff meant to be used outdoors. Today’s kid wouldn’t have a clue.

[Tallguy]

I think you nailed it. The air bags made it dangerous to be in a car without using seatbelts with shoulder restraints. Prior to the advent of mandatory airbags, seatbelts use was pretty much optional. Same goes for child safety seats. They are a way of ‘packaging’ a small person so the darned airbag doesn’t kill them in a minor fender-bender. Then you throw-in the fact that cars are so small, and designed to sacrifice themselves to protect the passenger making the entire design philosophy irreversible.

[Iscool]

“Well, using that argument, what kind of monster would want a kid to drown in a pool? So that’s it. no more pools.”

Lol! We are not banning pools!

But shouldn't 'they'??? Is a dip in the cool water worth the risk of the life of one of your children???

[Deplorable American1776]

Great picture. My friend’s parents had a wagon and the seats were rear facing. What a great car - a 1970 Mercury Colony Park. Another had a Country Squire with a table and side seats.

[Chickensoup]

Insurance companies pressure is why we have this.

[Chickensoup]

My brother had one of those

[Chickensoup]

My largest suv fit 8. Most only fit 6