Re: Adios car seat


"Cathy Kearns" <cathy_kearns@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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"Michelle J. Haines" <mhaines@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Our law is 8 years AND 80 pounds, which means my kids are gonna be in
car seats until they're 15, at this rate. :p

I think the saddest thing about this is we are letting car manufacturers
off
the hook on safety.

I don't think it has anything to do with car manufacturers...

Why can't they build vehicles that are adjustable to be
safe for anyone over 50 lbs?

That can stem into all kinds of other issues. A person 50lbs is a lot
different than a person that is 150lbs, for obvious reasons. If you try and
fit someone 50lbs properly in a seat, chances are that 150lbs person won't
properly fit.

Despite laws that require car seats, once kids
get into school there are field trips and carpooling to after school
activities that means people with school aged kids are often ferrying
children other than their own. Even if the child seat/booster comes with
the kids, the chances of that car seat either a) be left unused, or b) be
improperly used are pretty high.

That's true. I do agree with that. I had some issues with DS's school the
first week or so where the school bus was a big mess because we had moved
unexpectedly. The bus refused to put DS on an existing route for safety
reasons, should there be an accident or something, I'm not even sure, so the
principal said he would get DS home safely, yet he took DS home in his truck
with no seat or anything. I'm not sure how the principal's truck was any
safer than the school bus that was already running a route that went past
our house anyways.

Why can't the government require that back
seat shoulder belts be adjustable, so the belt is properly restraining the
child.

It's actually not the shoulder part of the belt that's an issue. It's the
side of the seat where a child's legs cannot properly bend at the edge,
causing the smaller child to slouch down and have the lap part of the belt
be too high around the stomach, rather than around the pelvis. The shoulder
strap is not really so much a safety issue if it's too high, it becomes one,
though, when the child finds it uncomfortable across their cheek or
something and put it under their armpit, behind their back, etc. The major
concern is the lap part, the minor concern is the shoulder part, although
yes, both are safety concerns. Making an adjustable seat for legs would
probably be fairly silly, in the long run.

Or have flip down boosters that come in all family type cars. If
government regulations made it no hassle to ensure a safe seat for every
child, every child would be safer.

Lots of people cannot afford to buy brand new cars, if this ever became a
possibility. I know some newer vans have built in child seats and booster
seats available when you flip the seat down. I know that we sure cannot
afford to spend $40,000+ on a brand new van for a feature such as this, and
I'm sure lots can't either. Even a brand new car... We couldn't manage
that, so if new regulations came in making it mandatory for children to be
in differently designed cars, we would not be able to have a car at all.
We'd be on city buses, which poses another problem of no seatbelts of any
sort provided. Modifying all the city buses to accomodate small children
would be silly, and I think that making new cars and expecting everyone with
small children to have one would be very unreasonable. Just my 2¢, anyways.



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