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Comment by sfn42 | Hacker News Reader

Here's what I found doing a basic Google search:

> Car seats and booster seats significantly reduce the risk of fatal injury in crashes by 71% for infants and 54% for toddlers (1-4 years old), saving over 11,000 lives in the US since 1975

> Booster seats reduce the risk of serious injury for children aged 4-8 by 45% compared to seatbelts alone.

It's from the AI summary because it was the most quotable but the articles I found say pretty much the same thing. Seems pretty solid to me.

> If you haven't experienced this, it's hard to describe - and I think it's absolutely a case where tradeoffs like "how will this affect quality of life?" are completely overridden because "well, if it just saves one life..."

If you haven't experienced your children dying unnecessarily because it was inconvenient to make them safe it's hard to describe..

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See my comment summarizing the evidence as I understand it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47590700

What articles did you find, exactly? What primary evidence are they basing their claims on? Many of the numbers you'll find with a google search are unclear about what they're comparing to - I believe both of the fatality numbers above (71% and 54%) are relative to completely unrestrained kids, which is not the relevant comparison.

The 45% number I specifically discuss in the other comment, but every independently reproducible study using publicly available data has found much smaller effects, around 10-25% for minor injuries and no statistically significant difference in severe injuries.

To be clear, I'm not saying "don't use car seats," I'm saying that the evidence doesn't support mandating them through age 8 (or 12!).

Our kids would be much safer if we drove everywhere at 15mph - less convenient, but it would prevent many unnecessary deaths. Unfortunately, it is impossible to do anything in the world without risk. So we're forced to balance convenience against safety every day, whether we want to admit it to ourselves or not.

I think this was one of the ones I looked at: https://www.trafficsafetymarketing.gov/safety-topics/child-s...

It notes this, which might be pertinent to your comment regarding how the overall statistics don't show the trends you expect:

> A NHTSA study found that while most parents and caregivers believe they know how to correctly install their car seats, about half (46%) have installed their child’s car seat incorrectly.

Here's a more quotable one that directly addresses your claim that it's compared with unrestrained: https://www.cdc.gov/child-passenger-safety/prevention/index....

> Car seat use reduces the risk for injury in a crash by 71–82% for children, when *compared with seat belt use alone*.

Here's another one specifically concerning booster seats: https://www.childrenshospitals.org/news/childrens-hospitals-...

> Children in booster seats in the back seat are 45% less likely to be injured in a crash than children *using a seat belt alone*.

That's about as much effort as I'm willing to put into this conversation. I'll finish off by saying I'm not American and these rules exist outside the US as well - I have a hard time believing so many countries would separately implement this (or similar) mandate if it was as unfounded as you claim.

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