http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/10/ma...EAK.html?8hpib
Quote:
This article in the NYT Magazine today just stinks. The authors claim that no matter how you analyze the data, fatalities are the same whether children were in car seats or seatbelts. How is that possible? What three year old keeps a regular seat belt on?! And what was the number of children actually in the seatbelts at the times of the crashes? Not given. Okay, part of me is panicking about how unsafe cars are in general, but there are so many holes in this article.
What really gets me is that they only mention fatalities and not injuries, which must surely show a distinction, and which alone would make car seats worth using. The final whammy is when they commission a total of two tests (showing no difference between seats and belts), but omit data for neck and abdominal injury. Such insignificant injuries, really.
It's such a weak piece of reporting and has the potential to do such harm. I can just see people taking a few buzz lines from the story and running with it.
Yes, we need integral belts for children in cars and buses and planes, but this isn't exactly an effective way to goad the industry into providing them!
Grrrrrr. Anybody have any insight that will bring my blood pressure down again?
warmly,
Kam, mamamama! to Meg
Quote:
But no matter what you control for in the FARS data, the results don't change. In recent crashes and old ones, in big vehicles and small, in one-car crashes and multiple-vehicle crashes, there is no evidence that car seats do a better job than seat belts in saving the lives of children older than 2. (In certain kinds of crashes -- rear-enders, for instance -- car seats actually perform worse.) |
What really gets me is that they only mention fatalities and not injuries, which must surely show a distinction, and which alone would make car seats worth using. The final whammy is when they commission a total of two tests (showing no difference between seats and belts), but omit data for neck and abdominal injury. Such insignificant injuries, really.
Yes, we need integral belts for children in cars and buses and planes, but this isn't exactly an effective way to goad the industry into providing them!
Grrrrrr. Anybody have any insight that will bring my blood pressure down again?
warmly,
Kam, mamamama! to Meg