> A common argument for minimizing the impact of such rules is to point out that there technically exist ways to cope with them. This post on LessWrong suggests sufficiently small boosters exist. This would still be highly annoying, and intuition says that this is going to be a very tight squeeze if the kids are approaching eight years old even in the best case.
It actually gets easier as the kids get older: narrow booster seats are common and cheap, while there are only a few narrow seats for younger children.
FWIW, since writing that post we’ve been putting three kids across in an especially small car for a bit over a year, and after some hassle at the beginning around choosing the right seats it’s been fine. The oldest (8y) recently got tall enough to stop needing a booster (to keep from having the seatbelt across the neck), and while not dealing with their seat is a bit less work for us it’s not much: they were already using a light and narrow booster.
In the FB discussion around that post Erica brought up that car seat rules and fewer children could both be caused by cultural changes: a rising sense that you need to be highly protective of children. This seems very plausible to me, and I don’t see how either the study’s design or your analysis accounts for it?
Ah, a light booster seat to get the chest belt at the right height makes so much more sense. I was shocked when I was imagining the law required a crazy contraption like baby car seats but for eight year olds...
> A common argument for minimizing the impact of such rules is to point out that there technically exist ways to cope with them. This post on LessWrong suggests sufficiently small boosters exist. This would still be highly annoying, and intuition says that this is going to be a very tight squeeze if the kids are approaching eight years old even in the best case.
It actually gets easier as the kids get older: narrow booster seats are common and cheap, while there are only a few narrow seats for younger children.
FWIW, since writing that post we’ve been putting three kids across in an especially small car for a bit over a year, and after some hassle at the beginning around choosing the right seats it’s been fine. The oldest (8y) recently got tall enough to stop needing a booster (to keep from having the seatbelt across the neck), and while not dealing with their seat is a bit less work for us it’s not much: they were already using a light and narrow booster.
In the FB discussion around that post Erica brought up that car seat rules and fewer children could both be caused by cultural changes: a rising sense that you need to be highly protective of children. This seems very plausible to me, and I don’t see how either the study’s design or your analysis accounts for it?
Ah, a light booster seat to get the chest belt at the right height makes so much more sense. I was shocked when I was imagining the law required a crazy contraption like baby car seats but for eight year olds...