“Under California law starting Jan. 1, children must use car seats until they are 8 years old or 4-feet-9 inches tall, up from the current requirement of 6 years or 60 pounds.”
I wonder if there are actually any studies that show improvements in safety due to child seat use among kids in this age and weight group.
I predict a new market in more fashionable larger child seats.
It’s kind of weird, right? Instead of making regular car seats that are safe for people who are 4 feet and taller, regulators decide that it’s safer to mandate the use of strap-on car seats for people up to 4’ 9", which are meant to be attached to regular car seats. This cannot possibly be the optimal solution.
giddity
This is the same state that banned the happy meal. Trust the state government, they know what’s good for you.
Well, in all fairness, the Happy Meal ban was just for San Francisco, but still.
8 years old? that’s like 3rd grade. dang
Daughter is 5 and barely fits her seat. At 8 she should be almost driving her hammered dad home.
It’s the car seat companies lobbying for this, graco is behind this. I like India, where babies just sit in their mothers laps.
Ca passed a law that goes into effect now where plastic bags are no longer legal in San Jose which is unbelievably annoying. You can bring a bag into the store if you buy something, but they charge you .25 for a "reusable" plastic bag or a paper bag. My guess is it costs about .05 for these bags so these companies basically are able to not only profit off of the bags, but completely eliminate the elastic cost structure of the bag. Takes forever to get out of the store as well. Makes me rage…
Is the charge for the plastic bags not a tax? So the store itself shouldn’t profit from it I would have thought. It’s an environmental measure to prevent plastic ending up in rivers/streams and littering the countryside. I think that’s a good idea personally. I’m not sure why the tax would apply to paper bags though. Are they not biodegradable? I would have thought the aim of this measure would be to encourage shoppers away from plastic to paper.
I wonder if this means I’ll eventually have to buy plastic bags for my cats’ poo.
My oldest son is 9 years old and is 5’ 3". He would barely be out of the car seat law, and would look absolutely ridiculous sitting in one.
Well there actually has been some research done. There are two links to some on this freakonomics page, and a clip from why the secretary of transportation can’t take the risk of relying on “data”. http://www.freakonomics.com/2009/10/27/what-the-secretary-of-transportation-has-to-say-about-my-car-seat-research/