It Began With Saaaaaaaaaaaafety Seats

Eric Peters Autos ^ | October 13, 2020371318 | eric

[E. Pluribus Unum]

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The government requires that all kids – almost teenagers – be tied down like furniture every time they are transported in a car. This wasn’t always the case.

Why has it become the case?

Answering that question requires asking the question: What business is it of the government – of other people with various titles – to decree such things? Do these other people own your children? Do they own you? They are implicitly asserting at least partial parental oversight authority.

Where did they get this authority?

Did you, the parent, give it to them? If you did not, how is it that these other people have come to wield it over you?

It is said – by some – that it is  “unsafe” for kids to be in cars without being in saaaaaaafety seats. And yet hundreds of millions of them – almost everyone who achieved adulthood before the early 1990s, before the government mandated child (almost teenager) ssssssssaaaaaaaafety seats for all – grew up not being strapped into them without suffering any injury at all.

Some did, of course. Some also tripped and fell. Others fell harder. Some drowned. A few also died from various things, some of them possibly avoidable.

So there is a degree of risk. As with everything in life. We all face risk every day, to varying degrees...

[fr_freak]

Was thinking of a head-on.

Yes, exactly. In a head-on collision, everything in the car would fly forward, not back.

[vpintheak]

LOL

[Beowulf9]

The statue on the dash would fly forward if the car were hit on the nose? I don’t think so.

[fr_freak]

The statue on the dash would fly forward if the car were hit on the nose? I don’t think so.

Come on, dude. Think back to your high school physics class. Momentum for everything in the car is forward. What happens when the car comes to a sudden stop like, say, when something strikes it in the nose?

[Beowulf9]

Doesn’t come to a full stop till after the collision though.

[fr_freak]

Doesn’t matter. All you need for stuff to move forward is deceleration. I’ll tell you what - next time you’re driving, put a cup of coffee on your dashboard. Then tap the brakes and see what happens.

[Beowulf9]

K, but. A plastic one ;)

[SamAdams76]

Growing up, my father would cut the seat belts out of the cars he bought. Said it made it easier to vacuum the seats at the car wash.