Hacker News Reader

Comment by lkbm | Hacker News Reader

Not sure how much we need to optimize for this. Plane crashes are rare. I'm happy to risk a baby seat crashing into me if my plane crashes if it means the 99.99987% of the flights are slightly better.

View on HN

The math is more that benefits aren't that great and the dangers are pretty big, especially if someone fails to properly secure the carrier and you get a rejected takeoff

Really? Flight staff are checking to make sure everyone wears a seatbelt. Check the carriers, too. Seems like a non-issue.

What parent in their right mind is bothering to bring a baby carrier and can’t manage to secure it?

You would be surprised.

attaching a baby carrier / car seat to a vehicle seems easy, but a recent study showed that about half of US drivers had their seats installed incorrectly, and these are vehicles where the driver has unlimited time and resources to get it right.

I can't imagine that percentage goes up when strapped for time and under pressure during aircraft boarding.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/national-car-seat-check...

Vehicles are also more dangerous which should tell you something about the actual impact on safety.

What's most important is what's inside the vehicle. People outside it are usually lower class and therefore not worthy of serious consideration.

Driving small humans around in anything less than a hummvee is neglect. /s

Importantly, though, a crewmember doesn't stop by to check if you strapped the car sear correctly

In my experience they always stopped by to check that the seat was certified and that you knew how to install it. For aircraft install though it's usually simpler than a car because the only way to do it is a belt pass through.

I remember the very first time I installed a car seat, I rigorously followed the instructions, verifying each step both textually and by image. After that, we had it inspected by the local FD who said "you did it wrong" and rearranged it in a way that looked wrong to me (some detail with the straps and routing). I still don't know who did it right.

Same experience. My wife and spent more than an hour trying to get it all right, then went to the inspection facility, and they completely re-did it all. I now have teenagers, but still don't actually know how to install a seat correctly.

Maybe car seats have gotten easier but with my two young kids I've had to install and uninstall car seats dozens of times. 5 out 6 different car seats. It only takes like 2 minutes to do it right.

Isofix, click, it goes green. Some have an additional strap which goes over the top and clips on. I'm not sure how you can get it wrong unless you either don't check it's green.

The installation mode for planes is actually easier due to the standardization of the actual seat belts versus for cars the carriers will have different instructions depending on whether UAS is present, belt install, top tether, etc. In an aircraft there's really only one way to do it which is passing the belt through.

Usually what I see happen is that people will wait until they are done checking seatbelts and then take them off.

> What parent in their right mind

As a parent, you would be extremely saddened to learn that many are not.

My experience has been that as long as your car seat has the right certification they are allowed and the flight staff do check both that it has the certification sticker and that you've installed then correctly. The installation mode for planes is typically significantly simpler than in a car because it's just the belt pass through and seat angle. There's nowhere to attach a top tether.

I do (barely) buy this for car seats. It obviously makes no sense for the baby carriers that the article is talking about.

Indeed. This is the same type of bankrupt government logic that classifies a slingshot as a firearm.

Also, car seats are actually allowed as long as they have the right certification sticker.

This to me is the craziest part. Soft cloth baby carrier use is banned because of a 1994 study that tested car seats -- meanwhile I am allowed to put my baby in their car seat in the plane for the full duration of the flight including takeoff and landing.

Nobody is going to survive a crash where a 3 lb soft wearable baby carrier is travelling at a high enough relative speed to do any damage.

Not a crash. A badly-secured heavy object will injure someone in turbulence where otherwise no injury would have occurred.

Soft wearable baby carriers are not heavy.

Turbulence that loosens objects is very common.

My guy a car seat will do nothing in a crash.

Yeah we're flying in aluminum cans with hundreds of pounds of luggage above our heads held in by doors with doors that regularly malfunction. The occasional baby seat that might become a projectile seems low on the list of things likely to impact me, much less change the outcome appreciably in a crash.

Plus, everyone's poorly secured laptops and phones flying around.

In this context the baby that isn't strapped in is the loose object. The use of car seats and harnesses is not just about a full loss of control of the aircraft and resulting crash.

This isn't about car seats, it's about baby carriers, and it's not about protecting you in a car crash:

> When our babies were little, carriers were massively helpful in flying. The baby likes it, and your arms are free.

> The carrier means the baby can sleep wherever we are, and I can have my hands free. If you can breastfeed in the carrier, even better because the baby can eat as you’re navigating the airport, etc. Carrying the baby centered on your body is easier on your back than carrying them in the carseat. Plus it’s good for walking / sightseeing at your destination.

It’s at least got a 5-point harness and head and side guards which is something no adult on the plane has.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com