Odd and unsafe baby car seats from the past | Hacker News Reader

Odd and unsafe baby car seats from the past

rarehistoricalphotos.com

119 pointsBrajeshwar131 comments

My parents were quite concerned about car safety and tell me that when they bought a new car after I was born they insisted that it be fitted with seat belts even though the salesman insisted that it was a waste of money (mid 1960s).

Also my parents: they bought my sister and me chid car seats "so you could look out the windows". Basically a shallow plastic bowl with a cushion attached and a folding wire frame underneath to make it higher.

Was it a Cosco Go Seat?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/195773905158

That's what I had as a kid. I don't recall a cushion, though. Also, the plastic developed a crack and would painfully pinch your skin if you were wearing shorts.

Why indeed it was!

The photo you linked to shows the cushion I was talking about -- the darker green patch.

that little seat with the steering wheel? I had one of those, and I still remember it from age ... 3? 4? I remember the day I realized that moving the steering wheel back and forth all the time is not the way you drive a car, as fun and obvious as it is that it should work that way. I noticed my mother was holding the wheel straight so I started imitating her. (looking back now I can see so much of my generalized autism: playing with matchbox cars, I spent most of my time setting them up for parallel parking, and then for diagonal parking between the stripes. I hated when my friends wanted any type of "fantasy" play, i just wanted to be realistic all the time.)

I concur that the main point of those car seats was as a booster seat, to get the kid up high enough to see out the window so they could better occupy themselves and not squall, but perhaps my perspective is biased.

Also, that woman driving the car in the white heels? looks pretty much exactly like my mother.

It’s interesting that you use the way you played with matchbox cars as an example, as I’ve seen that exact scenario used by therapists to inform an autism spectrum diagnosis in children. Probably not a coincidence, since they’re a very, very common toy that’s accessible to every demographic in western societies.

One thing to realize about these photos - they're still a vast improvement over a child literally rolling around on the floor (where they could get entangled with the pedals or who knows what else).

I'm not convinced that's true. In a crash, the bar is going to cause a lot of internal damage and whiplash (if it contains them at all)... I mean it might be true, but I really doubt it was tested formally.

I think OP means that it’s an improvement in crash prevention not crash safety.

Exactly. You could go your entire life without being involved in a crash, but if a child is rolling around in the car, you will probably be involved in at least annoyance quite quickly.

It's ok, babies fold. I'm sure I've read that somewhere.

I'm not entirely convinced that your baby hanging outside the car is an improvement over your baby just laying on the seat.

I think that one was a "baby hangs inside the window when driving, but you can hang them outside when parked at a picnic".

But maybe not! Maybe life was much more exciting (and bug filled) for babies back then.

I feel like the metal frame external car seat would get hot as hell in the baking sun when taking your baby for a picnic.

Park in the shade?

Either way, at least Baby wouldn't suffocate in the heat, as they do nowadays.

I was a baby in the early 70s, and I'm not even sure I ever had anything resembling a car seat. I remember walking around in the back seat area of my grandmother's giant Ford sedan in the early 1970s.

I also remember sitting on the rear "luggage shelf" of my mom's Triumph TR6 2-seat sports car. I loved that, because my head was high enough that I could see the road ahead. I can only imagine how I would have gone flying and likely been impaled on the gear shift if there had been an accident...

It was much later than that, I remember sleeping on the back shelf of my parent's little 240D Benz on long road trips.

Of course, people still do things like sleep on the floor of a minivan, but it's not quite as common now.

For a bit of perspective , it's kind of funny to see the 240D called a “little” car. A while back, after the introduction of the 190 (predecessor of the C-class), the 240 and its ilk (the successors of which are now collectively known as the E-class) were the definition of a mid-size Mercedes – but even before that, they were generally accepted all over the world, except for North America, as large cars.

Many of the cars people think of when they think "small sedan" are actually larger in almost all dimensions than height when compared to small and compact SUVs - the W123 240D is only 3 inches shorter than the Ford Expedition!

Also, driver safety wasn’t a thing, either. If a car came to a rapid stop, those kids would have been flying through the front window, but chances are the driver would be impaled on the steering column (the steering wheel would easily break of, but that column would be rigidly connected to the front axle), the engine block might be pushed through the car into the back seats, maiming any legs it encountered, etc.

Cars were extremely dangerous at the time and could kill their passengers in collisions even at low speeds.

Ralph Nader had a point (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed:_The_Desig...)

The glass broke like picture frame glass, all sharp-edged and spiky. Safety glass was invented as it breaks into tiny shards that are unlikely to cause major damage.

I read Roald Dahl's autobiography when I was young (young enough to be reading his other children's books) and remember his description of the car accident in 1925, when he was 9:

> The driver was to be that twelve-years-older-than-me half-sister ... She had received two full half-hour lessons in driving from the man who delivered the car, and in that enlightened year of 1925 this was considered quite sufficient.

> ...

> Spurred on by our shouts and taunts, the ancient sister began to increase the speed. The engine roared and the body vibrated. The driver was clutching the steering-wheel as though it were the hair of a drowning man, and we all watched the speedometer needle creeping up to twenty, then twenty-five, then thirty. We were probably doing about thirty-five miles an hour when we came suddenly to a sharpish bend in the road. The ancient sister, never having been faced with a situation like this before, shouted ‘Help!’ and slammed on the brakes and swung the wheel wildly round. The rear wheels locked and went into a fierce sideways skid, and then, with a marvellous crunch of mudguards and metal, we went crashing into the hedge. The front passengers all shot through the front windscreen and the back passengers all shot through the back windscreen. Glass (there was no Triplex then) flew in all directions and so did we. My brother and one sister landed on the bonnet of the car, someone else was catapulted out on to the road and at least one small sister landed in the middle of the hawthorn hedge. But miraculously nobody was hurt very much except me. My nose had been cut almost clean off my face as I went through the rear windscreen and now it was hanging on only by a single small thread of skin. My mother disentangled herself from the scrimmage and grabbed a handkerchief from her purse. She clapped the dangling nose back into place fast and held it there.

— Roald Dahl, Boy (1984)

One strand away from becoming Voaldahlmort

> If a car came to a rapid stop, those kids would have been flying through the front window

That's how my sister broke her arm and what got my entire family on the "buckle up every time" train.

Fortunately, she was in the backseat of a van so she wasn't ejected from the vehicle. But it was a real wake up call. (This happened back in the 90s).

This story is dumb luck, and not an anti-seatbelt sentiment in any way: my grandmother was in a collision severe enough to send her flying through the front windshield and into the ditch, and the shape of the car(s) afterwards suggested that if she weren't tossed from the car she would have been crushed to pieces.

Things are different today, but interesting to think that the structural integrity on these old machines was so poor that you'd rather get hurled from the car in an accident.

Yeah, it's crazy to think there was a time when cars put little to no engineering into passenger safety. A modern car is designed with room for the engine bay to be crushed to absorb some of the impact while all of the rigidity is put into the cage surrounding the passenger compartment

At least that's the case for normal cars. SUVs have some weird regulatory loopholes around them (in the US) that negate these good ideas.

Decent manufacturers still use best safety practices even when not required to. Volvo and Mercedes invented most of the modern safety tech in the 70s and 80s and use it on all models, most other higher end cars do as well nowadays.

If your car company only makes your car as safe as legally required, is that what you want to trust your family with?

Sure, the legal requirements are more than sufficient

That’s a personal decision of course, but the most dangerous cars have real world death rates over 200x that of the safest designs, and they are all legal[1]. Driving is incredibly dangerous on average, yet the risk can be almost entirely mitigated by choosing the right vehicle. I find it shocking how much difference there is.

[1] https://www.kbb.com/car-news/the-deadliest-and-least-deadly-...

That's an understatement. According to that data, the most dangerous cars are infinitely more dangerous than the safest cars (205 driver deaths per million registered vehicle years vs. 0). Even more interestingly, the fifth safest car is infinitely more dangerous than the safest four cars (2 vs 0).

Also note that this is the driver death rate. The death rates for other people are vastly different.

You shouldn't jump to conclusions from the data, either. A Dodge Challenger (3rd most driver deaths) is probably not unsafe per se, it just attracts people that want to take unnecessary risks.

Driving is quite safe on average. In my home country there's 5.1 deaths per a billion vehicle kilometers. That's about one death every 2.5 million hours of driving at highway speed. Many other things carry a greater risk of death.

Traffic accidents are still the leading cause of death in older children and young adults... as a parent, it is by far the most important safety factor I have any control over.

That is a good point about confounding factors based on who buys these cars, but overall it is pretty clear that most of the safest vehicles are larger cars and mid-sized SUVs from the higher end Japanese and European companies. They are all vehicles that are both heavy and have car like safety features.

Sure, but try to import a euro-spec Volvo or Mercedes into USA or Canada and the safety authorities will treat you like you’re pointing a gun at them.

The body of the car is identical. It would make no commercial sense to build the same vehicle with a rigid passenger cell surrounded by crumple zones for some markets, and in some other fashion for others. Any spec differences are equipment, peripherals, and engines – so performance, fuel economy, and exhaust cleanliness may differ, but not passive safety.

ETA: Also, many of those Euro-standard “European” cars are built in the USA and exported to their “home“ markets.

What you are saying is certainly true.

However, the problem is that in order to get your SUV classified as a 'light truck' in the US, and benefit from regulatory loopholes, certain features are pretty much banned. Some of them impact the safety, especially of pedestrians.

Btw, I'm not so much worried about the safety of my own car (especially since I don't own one), but rather the safety of other people's cars for cyclist, pedestrians and other cars.

(I don't live in the US either, I just bring up their regulatory environment as an example.)

There are some SUVs such as the Nissan Pathfinder and BMW X3 with a driver death rate of zero.

https://www.iihs.org/ratings/driver-death-rates-by-make-and-...

The Space Shuttle has a death rate of 14 per 542,398,878 miles.

Death rate may not be the only variable to look at.

Interestingly, that matches the rate per vehicle miles for late-1970s automobiles: https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...

(originally linked from elsewhere in this discussion)

That was an argument people made when seatbelts first became mandatory. They thought that without a seatbelt they would be "thrown clear" in an accident, when in reality that is very unlikely to happen.

My elderly medical University lecturer told us about first aid in old cars and how before seatbelts and safety glass, people would have their necks slit from the windshield while being ejected leading to a rather quick demise.

Never mind that being "thrown clear" involves breaking the windshield with your skull. Not pleasant under the best of conditions.

And yet we have so many people who want them to go back to making cars like that...

It's why motorbikes don't have a seatbelt. Except the ones with a roof, which do.

It's entirely possible that when a vehicle doesn't have a roof, it's better to be thrown out (while wearing a helmet and other safety gear, obviously) than to be strapped in a seatbelt.

If a car came to a rapid stop, those kids would have been flying through the front window

Nah, Mom would stick her arm out during rapid stops to keep that from happening. No, Mom had never taken a physics class, thanks for asking.

Also, when your 70 something granddad says cars today are fragile and break too easily in a crash, they're right.

Old cars were built to last, to survive crashes with a minimum of damage and to be easily repairable as soon as you hose out the remains of the former occupants who were turned into an untasty raspberry jam like substance after bouncing around the inside of their indestructible death cabs at 60 miles an hour.

If it weren't for rust and lack of maintenance, many of those old beasts would still be on the road today.

Today's cars collapse and crumple like wet tissue by comparison, but then after the accident your friendly local fireman can use some powered jaws to open your little nesting cocoon and extract you largely unhurt from accidents that would have turned you into aforementioned jam just 60 years ago.

Sure, the car is toast but who wouldn't trade a brand new car for years of life, especially when many people have insurance so your deductible can be as little as a few hundred dollars?

Some may provide a little extra safety. Some seem to make things worse. A hammock for safety? LOL.

Pros: It will automatically orient to either a frontal or rear collision and has tons of contact area with the body. If it's made of even a slightly stretchy material it would also spread the force out over some period of time.

I wish more vehicles had more rear-facing seats. Can’t get used to it without experiencing it throughout life.

Seems like only bi-directional train cars have them, or trams that rarely slow down rapidly.

Metros have them, and in my experience the rear-facing seats are more comfortable, as metros decelerate much faster than they accelerate (or at least in Lille, I didn't notice it as much in three other metros I took).

The Kia Carnival can be switched to rear-facing - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdG3BAudW2g

I had similar thoughts, but that doesn't make it any less funny!

If that hammock and it's attachment are strong enough, it's probably the safest of all the options shown in the article.

It certainly looks a lot safer than the ones that hang your child outside the car.

It's probably same as the ones that hang from the car's seats. Someone hanging it on the window to take a picture or whatever seems likely, maybe even advertised, but that doesn't mean anyone was driving with it that way.

I hope not, anyway.

I don't think I wore a seatbelt until my teenage years. We mainly rode in the back of the stationwagon where there was enough room to play games.

I also remember riding in truck beds was a normal thing.

I've sat backwards in the trunk of a Ford Taurus station wagon. A few years later there was one at a demolition derby - after the first hit there wasn't much car left behind the rear wheels... Eep!

70s kids rode in the back of the pickup truck. They'd yell at us not to jump around too much back there.

Car seat laws are fun, they often talk about size and (hopefully, usually) age: Some small people have a legal grey area where they should legally be in a car seat as they learn to drive.

Meanwhile my son is almost 3 and already approaching a size where he legally only needs a booster seat.

1980s kids too. I remember after tee-ball my entire team would hop into the back of the coach's pickup and ride to get ice cream.

In Singapore even today, all passengers in a car must wear seatbelts, unless they're crammed into the back of a pickup truck.

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/opinion/article/3131590/singa...

We did this in the 2000s as well

Now we have dozens of car seats designed by engineers and thoroughly crash-tested to create car seats that get thrown away (or are supposed to be) after any impact event. Makes me feel like we are much richer than we used to be.

It's definitely a rip off. I'm working on a new type of child car seat that I believe will take the market by storm. Guaranteed to be reusable after every crash. My plan to achieve this is by design the seat so that the force of the impact is funneled directly into the child, protecting the car seat from any damage.

Same for helmets. It less so it’s purposely designed so people will keep buying them but more so that something has to absorb the impact so the kid doesn’t. Mechanical deformation turns out to be the most effective and safest but deformation is also a one way street hence why you need to change it after an impact. That being said, how often are you getting into accidents?!

Imagine how much more expensive a car seat designed to be fully reusable after a collision would be, then consider how often most people are involved in serious collisions.

I'm in my 40s, and I've been a passenger in one collision that required a tow truck, something like 20 years ago. Most people I've talked to have similar experiences in terms of frequency of serious collisions.

It's less expensive overall to do it this way.

Yeah, that's because they're designed to absorb the damage into internal stress and deformation to dissipate the force of the crash.

That force and momentum has to go somewhere and it's better to absorb it into the car seat and consider it a consumable than to transmit that force into the child it's meant to protect. The same thing applies for helmets. A motorcycle helmet is a consumable item and should be discarded after a crash as the internal foam structure will be deformed and could fail to properly absorb the impact forces in a subsequent crash.

Given how rare an impact event is that’s quite reasonable - I’ve had car seats for 11 years now, from rear facing carrier to just a small booster (Italy requires a child to be 150cm to travel without a car seat)

I’ve disposed of them as the youngest child outgrows them, but they’ve never been in an impact.

I glanced at motor vehicle fatality rates in the U.S. previously and didn't see a clear impact of seat belt laws myself, instead the major drops seem to line up with economic recessions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35833165

That’s likely because people do not instantly start obeying the law the moment it’s instituted - takes time to break a habit and lax enforcement (honestly how many people do you know who were pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt) would result in no noticeable cliff in fatalities. Instead it probably gets absorbed in the gradual fatality reduction you see over time.

Good point, seat belt utilization is impossible to track accurately (until in-car surveillance cameras are fully rolled out), and likely varies widely generationally, regionally, etc.

US's NHTSA has stats on belt use rate from 1983-2017 based on the National Occupant Protection Use Survey: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_belt_use_rates_in_the_Uni...

~10% not using seatbelts in 2017 is extremely surprising to me. I really thought it would be ~1%.

Humans are terrible at risk management and there is still a stupidly large contingent of people who think seat belt laws are "nanny state", or that seat belts are "more dangerous" and they'd "rather be thrown clear in an accident"

Basically a lot of people operate on cartoon logic.

There's a bunch of people that will say "It's none of the government's business if I wear a seatbelt or not, so I'm not going to in protest of the nanny state"

More common than mobile phone usage

https://metro.co.uk/2023/08/17/police-use-ai-to-catch-300-dr...

In the places I drive, you can't get pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt. You can only get cited after some other violation, like speeding or blowing through a stop sign.

In many countries the police can pull over a vehicle and fine a passenger that isn’t wearing a seatbelt.

Many places in the US, you can be ticketed if a passenger isn't wearing a seatbelt. But I think the point GP is making is that it's also not a primary offense in may jurisdictions -- you can't be pulled over for it specifically, but it's fair game if you get pulled over for something else.

This is getting tangential but it's striking to me how fatality rates went up during the pandemic. You can see the dips during previous recessions and energy crises like you're saying, and I'd expect something similar during the pandemic, but it went the other way.

People were bored sitting at home. Getting out in your car and driving stupidly fast on empty roads was one way to alleviate that boredom. My 25mph road regularly became a drag strip.

Seems likely, I had to keep going to work in person during COVID and my commute to work became very fast, and not just because of the empty roads. I also wonder if there was an uptick in fatality as people started returning to work and those used to speeding down an empty road were suddenly confronted with traffic.

Also reminds me of some statistics I saw back in drivers ed class. I don't remember the exact stats, but in winter months there were significantly more crashes due to inclement weather/poor visibility as one might expect. But there were more fatal crashes in summer because people drive faster when they have clear conditions and line of sight.

> fatality rates went up during the pandemic.

They went down during lockdown in some places. I think the severity of lockdown is likely related, and New Zealand’s was more severe than most.

https://www.1news.co.nz/2020/12/31/sad-and-disappointing-202...

This is attributed to people driving at a fixed perceived level of risk. The explanation goes: seatbelt makes you safer, so it doesn't matter as much whether you crash, so you can increase speed or recklessness to get back to the same perceived risk threshold. Seatbelt introduction is used as a case study in behaviour in response to risk.

I remember there was one significant dip in the fatality curve, which turned out to line up with a period where people were told to drive on the other side of the road to usual, and thus proceeded more cautiously for a time.

Instead of driving on the right or w̶r̶o̶n̶g̶left side of the road, maybe for safety we should be switching it up every ten to twenty years, with shiftable steering wheels to switch driver sides, or some of these puppies: https://www.thedrive.com/news/37520/these-trick-pulley-syste...

I used to stand on the front seat with my mom driving (she was a terrible driver btw). She also took us kids once on a road trip around the mountains at 12000 ft elevation, lots of snow and exposed roads. This among other negligences unrelated to driving. A true miracle we made it into adulthood.

Pre 70s/80s cars were really total deathtraps, it's pretty amazing how far we've come.

https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatalit...

All modern cars are death traps.

Aren't bicycles more deadly per passenger mile?

In terms of being killed by other vehicles on the road yes

Which is why they don't belong on the road with cars.

I too agree with the banning of cars from areas where pedestrians and cyclists are likely to be, for example, all city centres and residential areas.

You don't need to go quite so far. Dutch levels of separation are probably enough.

The roads belonged to pedestrians, horses, and bicycles a long time before the car infestation took over

I can't believe you're in favor of banning cars, horses and bicycles from the road.

Modern cars are very safe for the occupants compared to all previous iterations. It's the people by foot or bike you crash those cars into that are in a bad place.

Though different cars differ. SUVs are particularly bad for pedestrians and cyclists.

In the truck-loving US yes, but in Europe, pedestrian crash safety is also taken into account and has improved a lot. E.g. Volvo have hoods that pop up on impact to cushion the blow for pedestrians.

Of course they're still less safe than not-cars, but in comparison to 50 years ago much has improved.

That hood popping system is also in BMWs, it may have become mandatory by now. Is it not included in US models?

It is but rather than normal cars, Americans prefer driving large pick-up trucks that are like being hit by a brick wall

https://cdn.theatlantic.com/thumbor/AtTPZlAj9QVkg7ZtJ6q9Vk9c...

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/suvs-truck...

All modern cars are deadly, just the deadliness is projected outwards.

Don’t get me wrong, increased car safety is a good thing but people can drive like maniacs with a pretty good assurance they’re not going to be seriously injured even if they get in a crash. So they do. Which is bad news is you’re a pedestrian or a cyclist.

They drove the same (or likely worse!) in 1960 when cars went just as fast as today, but they didn't have either the drivers training or the safety features of a modern car.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_r5UJrxcck

Wow this reminds me how much I miss all the legroom we used to have without a floor/center console. In modern cars I feel like I'm penned in a tiny personal pod.

I'm hopeful electric cars lead to a return of leg room.

Ah the 70s - I remember laying horizontal as a kid in the back window area of our Gran Torino looking up at the sky on long road trips. More fun though was standing in the back of a pickup truck holding on to anything I could on the roof while it hauled down a country road and we ducked to avoid low branches.

Does the playpen in the back of my mom’s WV Bus count?

I can’t tell if this article is AI generated or just sloppily written. The organization is really weird. There are just two (very specific) subheadings in the piece: “Bunny Bear Booster Seat (1933)” and “In the 1970s Car Hammocks for Babies Were a Thing (1970s)”, but these sections discuss multiple different car seat designs besides the title ones, making me think these “sections” were LLM-generated.

None of the photos are specific to the sections of the article they appear in—it’s as if the author just did a google image search for “old car seat” and sprinkled them throughout the article with no particular chronological or contextual significance.

It reads like an AI generated article. There also doesn't appear to be a by line. The site has a contact form, but no one is named in the contact us or about us page. To me, this points more to AI generated than sloppily written.

It is kinda weird: It'd be one thing if it was simply an unordered list of photos, but the text seems like it was randomly interspersed too.

I didn't read it, just enjoyed scrolling through the photos.

It's at least awesome that such a collection of photos exists of a topic that would otherwise certainly be entirely forgotten.

Do you think archeologists might still be able to find this series of photos in, say, 500 years?

I mean, I just google image searched “historical car baby seat” and all those photos showed up, almost in the same order as the article. To answer your question, if Google is still around, yes.

Kids are certainly less likely to be injured these days - but car seats for a dollar! Raising kids in the last 100 years makes normal consumer inflation look like a cute joke - modern car seats are easily 200x more expensive!

It’s a horrible actuary table to make, especially as a parent, but the engineer in me does some napkin math:

A) Number of children killed in car seat accidents

B) number of children not born due to increased financial burden of any given child

If B > A, we’re down net-children. Is “more kids” better than “safer kids”? Who’s to make a judgement like this?

It’s a gruesome math - and not one that applies to the financially well off: if you can afford it, you’re not complaining about increasing your child's safety.

It's not just about financial costs, it's also the physical space limitations.

Cars generally can only fit 3 carseats. Regardless of equipment costs, that makes it infeasible for parents to have a 4th child. They wouldn't be able to go anywhere.

This by itself has prevented thousands of births.

I've known people for whom this was a major factor in a decision to not have another child. They are always the most thoughtful, low time preference people whose kids would benefit society the most.

This was still a problem in the 80s after mandatory seatbelts came in and cars got narrower. Some people say that 3 across is too hard with a normal car but I’ve found that even with a small car you can get 3 in without much trouble if you just get narrower seats.

In the early 70's we'd drive down to Cornwall on holiday with my cousins - 3 adults and 3 kids squashed into a bog standard saloon car. It seems completely inconceivable now.

The cars with more than 5 seats do exist. If cost is not an issue as you suggest, it is pretty feasible to have 4+ children. It is even easier if you are not aiming to have them born in a rapid succession. Older kids can ride upfront.

Sure, but they are vans or large SUVs. You have a lot less choice as you can't look at most cars, and they generally use more fuel.

Just going from 2 to 3 kids shocked me at the cost increase, and we already had a minivan (hotel rooms sleep 4, so now we have to get 2 rooms or a suite). There are a lot of other things that go up a lot more than you would expect when you have more than 2 kids. Kids eat free is normally each parent can have one free kid.

Overall kids are not very expensive, and I'm glad I have them. However there are a number of things we can't do anymore. Family memberships are well worth it for us since most of them are one price no matter how many kids you have, and thus cheap entertainment for the rest of the year.

A lot of these car seat laws go until the kids are like 8-10 years old. So you'd have to spread the kids over a 12-13 year span. This isn't biologically feasible unless one starts having kids at 22, which isn't usually a great idea.

Did you read the same essay as me? https://thezvi.substack.com/p/on-car-seats-as-contraception

You can buy a car seat that meets the U.S. federal standards for about $60. Sure it won’t be as padded or have the maximum safety or have lots of cupholders, but it will do the job and be much safer than what I had as a kid.

You can also (in the UK at least) buy a second hand 'good brand' for about £20 from Facebook marketplace, or free if you're lucky.

You can't get one from eBay or a charity shop because ridiculously they're not allowed to sell them in case they're unsafe (eg they've been in an accident), but I imagine the actual risk to the child of gambling on a second hand one is miniscule.

We've had all ours second hand, 5 in total including ones bought for the grandparents cars, and we've spent less than £80 in total

In the US secondhand car seats are almost impossible to buy because the expiration date on car seats is so short. You sometimes can't even reuse car seats for a second child because everybody knows that a seat manufactured before 2020 is a total deathtrap and there have been so many safety innovations it is missing.

"total deathtrap" is a wild exaggeration.

The expiration dates are to force you to keep buying them instead of re-using what you already have.

> The expiration dates are to force you to keep buying them instead of re-using what you already have.

Maybe. I do think that the foam they use for impact absorption[1] has a limited life, and degrades over time.

[1] I assume it's the same or similar foam they use in motorcycle helmets, which degrade over time. I personally won't use an old helmet (say, 4 years), even if it has an expiration date in the future (which I also never check - I know when I buy it, so I know when I am going to replace it).

The foam is styrofoam. I've had to tear the seats apart several times to clean bodily fluids out of them, I'm well acquainted with the construction.

> "total deathtrap" is a wild exaggeration.

Sarcasm ;-)

Those expiration dates generate so much waste. We just give ours away on craigslist.. better than a landfill.

Car seats for a dollar when median family income was about $3,500 a year. It's about the same.

I can't lie, I like the look of that one that hangs them out the side window.

Can we get them for planes?

Not to be That Guy, but all car seats are unsafe since they're in cars. Im shocked on a daily basis how stupid and short sighted our car culture is, everyone has to behave perfectly all the time, and the consequences are death for you and random strangers. Any random stranger can sneeze at any time and kill your whole family.

> Any random stranger can sneeze at any time and kill your whole family.

So true. I live right near a stroad and a crosswalk on that stroad and about once a week I hear brakes being slammed on because people aren't paying attention and it's a high-traffic area for walkers (some of which are children) since the rest of the neighborhood is actually quite walkable. I've live in this place 1 year and now witnessed 4 accidents, luckily none of them killing anyone yet but it's just a matter of time.

I've also been traveling a lot recently and experiencing cities (even American ones) that value good public transportation with metros (and even trains in the Northeast) and it's a breath of fresh air. Then I come back to where I live and the only way to describe it is I'm watching these huge machines, piloted by and only transporting 1 person in most cases, barreling around my local area just narrowly missing each other at high speeds. Every pilot is just assuming every other pilot had enough coffee that day, isn't massively distracted by any number of things, doesn't have road rage, isn't trying to show off their loud, polluting, and dangerous machine, etc. No wonder kids increasingly stay inside and get depressed. Previous generations literally built car and parking lot hellscapes and expect people to still enjoy life outside the home.

> Not to be That Guy, but all car seats are unsafe since they're in cars.

Safety is a spectrum, not a binary.

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