Here’s the latest reader question, along with my reply!
Dave asks: How many ways can a car seat kill a child? Hot car deaths, strangulations and now positional asphyxia. Are there additional safety related deaths (SRD)?
My reply: But if it saves even one life!
That’s the reply usually uluated by the saaaaaaaaaaaaafety at gunpoint crowd. I add the “at gunpoint” part because it’s literally true. Fail to “buckle up” for saaaaaaafety and an armed man will threaten you with murderous violence.
There is no question that kid seats can save lives; it is equally true that they can take them. The question as I see it is – who gets to make the decision? The government of course asserts its authority to make the decision – but what gives government the right to do so?
It is not acting in self-defense. So it is asserting authority on the basis of ownership. Declaring that we must wear a seat belt is a declaration by the government that we are its property, over which it is exercising control. Ownership of something being defined as having legal power to control it. The government also asserts ownership over what we incorrectly refer to as “our” children. But if the government has legally enforceable authority to decree that we may not decline to put “our” children in a saaaaaaaafety seat – no matter that doing so entails risks as real as the supposed benefits – then the government owns “our” kids as much as it owns us.
And the halting thing about all of this – once you stop to really think about it – is that “government” isn’t a sort of Super Daddy or Oz that possesses authority (and ownership) by dint of being a higher-order of being. It is just word-play for other people; for nothing-special people, usually, who have simply got their paws on power – which is the source of their authority.
Which means they are no different, morally speaking, than slavers – with the key exception being they’re dishonest to the point of delusional in that they deny the brute force behind everything they couch in soft-sounding euphemisms.
Every one of them deserves a boot in the behind and a stern warning to keep their noses out of other people’s business and their guns away from other people’s backsides.
Our “safety” is no one else’s business. Even if we’re doing something actually unsafe – so long as the doing of it doesn’t cause anyone else any harm.
But this live-and-let stuff doesn’t sell anymore. Americans have become a nest of busybodies who won’t leave others alone and then get upset when others won’t leave them alone!
. . .
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I would bet if a study was done on backward facing carseats there would be things that happen in the brain and quite possibly in the body that are simply not known at this time for the children subjected to this.
I can see a kid who’s always had a car seat and you’re somewhere, like where I live and you let them drive(although I don’t know anyone who didn’t quit car seats well before they were school age. Imagine a child putting it into reverse and hauling ass. Sorry dad, it’s the only way I can see in a car. There’s something really fucked up about that entire scenario. They’ll grow up and not be able to drive any better than their mother.
And it wasn’t always that way. While women were definitely the underdog drivers when I was growing up, not all were clueless, especially the ones who grew up on the farm. In my day, back when the earth was still cooling, women and girls(if you didn’t have a boy) grew up learning to drive by farming and using a tractor. In the old days you could get off something like a Popping Johnny or a myriad brand of tractors after a long day and your old pickup seemed like it was a Cadillac with air ride. No noise, smooth as boat on calm water and powerful and fast beyond belief. I’ve put in a huge amount of tractor time in my life and they’re so much better I’d as soon drive one as many road vehicles.
I’ll never forget the debut of the John Deere 4320 in ’71. It had a huge square cab(not many of them made, just 71 and 72). It was smooth and quiet so the radio was something you didn’t have to turn up. It had an 8 speed Powershift, a new transmission that was patented and better than anything else. It would run 28 mph in 8th and you could go faster using the throttle over-ride. At the time the 5020 was the big hoss of 2WD tractors. The 4320 would out work it all day long and use less fuel since it was turbocharged.
There was so much room the wife and a friend who’d get off work before I did would come out and ride in it to get out of the heat. Plowing is boring enough you appreciate company.
Earliest memories I have are sitting in the front seat of my parents car as young as 3-4, and I’m alive and well today
I’ll use the “my wife called me to get them and I forgot their retard seats” excuse on the off chance an AGW stops me
Why there should be term limits and these faceless officials need to be exposed
My daddy let me steer when I was 4 or 5 to the point I didn’t need his legs to reach the pedal at which point I drove and was good at it. I got my license at 14 just like everyone else but I’d been driving 2 years without one. My best friend and I would take his ranch pickup when his parents were gone for a week-end and we’d drive 60 miles, looking like we were about 10 instead of 12 but never got stopped. We’d spend the day competing with our electric race cars, drop by some great place to eat, such as a drive-in where they sold as good food as walk in restaurants. If our other running buddy was with us, we’d have to stop at KFC and he’d dive into it and sound like a hog eating. Of course we all ate fast and went for the largest thing any place had to eat. At the counter “I want a bucket and a glass of tea”. Ok, do your buddies want tea too? Then they’d step up and order the same thing. We’d leave in misery but full. We’d get home dark-thirty(we felt more at ease in the dark)and raid the freezer for ice cream and make huge milkshakes. Then snack on other stuff. We were chow hounds for a fact.