Elizabeth just sent me an interesting NYT story about child car seats. It's not totally conclusive, but historical data seems to strongly suggest that even a normal car seat belt is practically as effective in keeping children (ages 2 and older) safe as child seat belts. Of course, infant seats are required for babies. But the main point of the article was that, for the "bigger" kids (i.e., those aged 2 or 3 and up), any kind of restraint makes a big difference over being unrestrained, and there's little difference between normal car seat belts and child car seats.
Posted by Tom Nugent at July 11, 2005 11:14 AMFreakonomics makes this point as well - first time I'd heard it, very interesting though.
Posted by: Cynical at July 12, 2005 05:56 PM