Seat Belts vs Car Seats

09/26/2008

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.
Eleanor Roosevelt

Car seats are no better than seat belts at protecting children aged 2 to 6 from serious injury, according to a new study that flies in the face of long-established research by auto makers, doctors, and child-safety advocates. The Globe and Mail reported on a paper that child-safety advocates call "dangerous and irresponsible," in which Steven Levitt, University of Chicago economist and author of the bestselling book Freakonomics, and MIT professor Joseph Doyle chip away at the conventional wisdom that has underpinned car-seat laws in North America for decades.

Dr. Doyle and Dr. Levitt analyzed three large sources of police car-crash data from Wisconsin, New Jersey, and the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. They found that while child-safety seats did help decrease minor bumps and bruises by 25 percent compared with seat belts, both types of restraint performed equally well at preventing serious injury among children aged 2 through 6.

"We don't want to ban car seats or anything," said Dr. Doyle. "Our study simply doesn't justify governments continually increasing mandatory age requirements for car seats."

Roughly 80 percent of car seats are installed improperly, according to Ontario's Ministry of Transportation, which the researchers said could partly account for their surprising results.... Some car-safety advocates say [car seat] laws are entirely warranted and they denounce the researchers' conclusions.

"For them to say lap-and-shoulder belts are a safe and low-cost alternative to car seats is a very dangerous statement," said Anne Snowdon, a University of Windsor nursing professor who has led a number of studies of children's safety in automobiles. "If a health professional were to utter such a thing it would constitute misconduct.... There is extensive research in health journals that indicate child seats are the safest way for young children to travel."

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