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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m a mom in my late 40s, and my kids were in car seats/boosters longer than their peers. But i do wonder from a pure public policy perspective if all this long term boostering makes sense. The reality is that car seats and boosters aren’t cheap and they seem to be used as a litmus test to show that poor people/people of color are “bad” parents that in some cases are BREAKING THE LAW. I also wonder how much there is a quiet car seat lobby driving all this.

I totally believe all the numbers about safety, but there are lots of things that would be safer that don’t get enacted into laws that are then used to tax poor people essentially who cannot afford them. But I also own my own business and have to run background checks on people that are hourly wage people. The amount of non-moving violations that are used against poor people because they cannot afford to get a headlight fixed, fix a seatbelt, etc, then they cannot pay the fine and then they get arrested when the cannot pay fines is just unbelievable.[/quote]

Infant seats and convertible seats can be expensive (though there are inexpensive options out there that meet all safety standards) but boosters, even high back harnessed boosters, can be much more affordable. I think ours cost like $60? You can get a backless booster for like $15. I’m sure as with anything, there are super high end versions of these that will cost a lot more, but the cheap ones, again, meet all safety standards and will significantly reduce risk of death or injury for a child in a car accident versus just a seat belt that is incorrectly positioned because of their size.

There are also many programs to provide free car seats and boosters to people who can’t afford them— our local fire house runs such a program and we donate to it every year.

While some people might use car seat standards to punish and harass poor people, I really do not think that is the goal behind the standards and recommendations. Those are driven by the fact that advocacy groups don’t want to see kids die in car accidents. Any kids.[/quote]

Np.  Small businesses Pp is right.  This is another excessive burden on poor parents.  $60 is a lot of money to a poor family.  Also three car seats can’t fit in many small cars so you are effectively limiting the number of kids a poor person can have.  And the expirations are an industry racket.

Yes car crashes are the number one way kids die.  But its also still thankfully very rare, and most of those cases involve kids not even in seat belts and/or drunk driving caregivers.  When we go to these zero sum extremes is when I believe we carry things too far and end up hurting families more than helping them.

Frankly I’d love to see more of that social investment/enforcement spent on public safety and ensuring safe walkable routes for kids and families and slowing cars down so that walkability is more feasible and kids spend less time in cars overall.  Then we deal with both the obesity epidemic and car safety.

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Have you not read the posts that on access to free car seats?

Also, from a practicality standpoint, if you are poor and own a car, I’m actually okay with car seat rules making it infeasible to have more kids. If that sounds harsh, fine. But as someone who grew up in a working class family with four kids they could not afford, and whose parents regularly skimped on safety or health because they couldn’t afford it, I don’t view that as a negative.[/quote]

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