Comment by bunderbunder | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bunderbunder | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I think the challenge here might be that, as the article says, this is all just hypothetical and hasn't been empirically tested. It also sounds like a lot of the reasoning predates modern babywearing equipment quite a bit.

With our kids, we used two different devices. One was just a long strip of cloth that you tie in a special way. The other was a more structured carrier with straps and buckles and all that good stuff. For both of them, the child faces toward the parent, so they would be rear-facing relative to the plane. And both have an option to fully support the head. The main purpose there is just to protect their neck while sleeping or during moderate activity, but it would offer at least some additional protection against neck injuries in a crash, rough landing, or during periods of turbulence.

Perhaps crush injuries are more likely with the baby strapped to you, but honestly I would be more worried about a parent holding their baby being more likely to drop them in the aisle during an evacuation, which would be more likely to endanger everyone behind them on the plane as well.

I think this is very true. the general consensus from NCPS techs we've talked to is that the most likely fatal injury to a child is spinal - their heads are extremely heavy relative to the rest of their body in infancy so the 'safest' seats tend to be the ones that distribute kinetics away or absorb it (like rear-facing seats where the sudden 'stop' pushes into the seat rather than having the baby's head fly forward)

that said, I've also heard that the US standards for car seats is piss poor relative to the rest of the world's. something about how they only test one head-on crash at 35mph and then extrapolate all the data from there. Germany's ADAC is supposedly the gold standard and I can see why - their tests are intensely comprehensive and granular, in the way you'd actually want them to be, and many of the seats rated safe by American standards fail ADAC: https://www.besafe.com/en/safety-tips/tests-awards/adac/

if there were to be a plane-oriented solution, the last place I'd trust it to be taken forward is in the USA especially given how easily corruptible safety-oriented institutions are here

> I've also heard that the US standards for car seats is piss poor relative to the rest of the world's

How do you define piss poor? The stats show that the US minimum standards still reduce fatal injury risks substantially. And your comparison point for 'rest of the world' is a German automobile club, not a government regulation. Would the better comparison be to ECE R129 for the EU?

> something about how they only test one head-on crash at 35mph and then extrapolate all the data from there

You know that the information is readily available and you could avoid spreading misinformation with a 10 second search, right?

The US regulation, FMVSS 213/213A, does a frontal crash at 30 mph as well as a side crash test at 30 mph. For apples-to-apples comparison, the EU regulation does a 31 mph frontal crash test and a 19 mph side test. All of the governmental tests are done on a standardized test bench. The German auto club test is 40 mph frontal and 31 mph side, done in a regular car.

There are also organizations in the US that do testing and ranking beyond the regulatory minimums.

I mean, you're right about side crashes but I'm reading that the NHTSA didn't implement this until 2022. and regardless, if all that were true the infant mortality rates per capita from car crashes would prove your point

so what do those stats say vs Germany, Sweden, the EU average? all very easily searchable, no mechanistic theorycrafting required. how does the US fare? certainly not multiple times worse across the board, right?

> if all that were true the infant mortality rates per capita from car crashes would prove your point

Would it? How much of the statistics are attributable to a difference in standards vs the higher average speed and larger average vehicles in the US? Physics is a harsh mistress, both of those factors have a lot of effect on crash energy.

what's Germany's highway speed limit again? and how is their per-capita rate compared to other EU countries with, well, any speed limit at all?

you're also claiming a multiplier for fatality rates for car sizes. and there is a significant difference (https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/global-car-economy) but the fun fact is that all cars around the world are getting much heavier - the US isn't even the leader in terms of how much cars have ballooned, only in that the starting point was higher

but for changes like that, you can control for fatality rates across time, correct? what do those numbers say? have bigger cars led to increased fatality rates? the IIHS has that data. what's that trendline look like? and what about Europe? there's data for that here: https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022... - page 10 seems to indicate a trend

IMO it's not necessarily unreasonable to use standards/evaluations set by a private industry group for this kind of thing.

US automobile safety ratings/improvements over time are largely driven by IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety). It's a private group but is the standard yardstick manufacturers expect to be tested against and fills in a lot of gaps in NHTSA official crash tests.

It wouldn't be strange to see IIIS plus NHTSA criteria used colloquially to describe "US crash standards" when talking about cars even if not fully defined by regulation.

"UL Listed" products or the International Building Code (the base model broadly followed with modifications by each state) are also "national standards" but not set by regulation.

The vast majority of the rest of the world simply doesn't use car seats at all. Even here in the US, in my very multinational city, I only see one demographic that consistently uses car seats at all, regardless of economic status.

Sometimes, I wonder what the societal costs of the ever increasing car seat requirements are.

I wouldn't want a third kid just because I don't want to deal with carseats anymore.

>I wouldn't want a third kid just because I don't want to deal with carseats anymore.

By the time you had your third, would the oldest still even be in a carseat?

But even then, three car seats is doable even in small cars: https://www.jefftk.com/p/three-car-seats

I meant that I do not want to deal with taking a kid in and out of car seats, or traveling with car seats, or taking them in and out of cars, for more years of my life.

Most likely still in a backless booster which means you need a bigger back seat.

You can easily get backless boosters in the 15" width range, which will go three-across without issue in any car that has three rear seats.

You're referring to the studies that show people have less children due to car seat laws but this article also covers some of the other consequences: https://ifstudies.org/blog/this-item-in-your-back-seat-might...

I'm so sick of this sentiment. Do people actually believe or is it just some weird excuse?

You can buy special car seats that can fit 3 across even in the smallest cars of Europe.

> The vast majority of the rest of the world simply doesn't use car seats at all.

I think this apply also outside of "the rest of the world". Nobody bothered to explain that an airbag without a seatbelt can be fatal or that in case of emergency braking the only thing stopping your passenger's movement is the windshield.

I work in child car seat development and I can second that the main issue for our mechanical engineers is preventing neck injuries. Rearward-facing car seats really are a lot better on that front.

ADAC is indeed the main test, but even more difficult than getting a good ADAC score is passing the plus test[1], which focuses on neck spinal forces.

[1]: https://www.vti.se/en/services/laboratory-and-testing/crash-...

ah yes! I knew I was forgetting something - the NCPS techs we talked to gushed about the AxKid that they had finally gotten imported to the US

I wish the Plus test included detacheable rear-facing seats too. we dropped quite a pretty penny on the Cybex Cloud T because of how well it scored elsewhere

Can you guys produce easy to read installation and cleaning manuals and not something designed by legal department. I think I can handle complex stuff, but car seats are just next level.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com