A Window into the Mentality

By
eric
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53
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40 years ago, it was legal to buy a new Subaru Brat with rear-facing jumpseats bolted to its bed. The Brat was not the only vehicle to offer rear-facing seats; many seven-passenger wagons had them, in order to accommodate up to nine people in one car – capacity not even the super-sizeiest new SUV offers.

Some had sideways-facing seats, if you can imagine that.

If you’re Gen X or older, you probably sat in such seats – and have some good memories of watching the world recede behind you as the car travelled on down the road. You are also probably still alive. As are probably 99.9 something percent of all those who have sat in rear-or-sideways-facing seats.

Which are now considered alarmingly “unsafe” – and not just by the government, which tells us everything (except obedience) is “unsafe” (in order to cajole our obedience). The parrot-press is just as alarmed. Or – more finely – obedient to the narratives of the government.

Have a look at this example. The writer is extremely alarmed by the existence of aftermarket rear-facing seats that some people – clutch your pearls! – have installed in their vehicles to allow for additional passenger-carrying capability. He parrot-repeats what the government says about such seats:

They “are not certified as meeting Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, which specify minimum safety performance requirements for motor vehicles and motor vehicle equipment. Motorists who own the seat should stop using it immediately. This warning is especially important because the seats are frequently used by children.”

He then squawks some of his own:

“ From what I can tell, these seats were pretty much just bolted on using two L-brackets, which cannot be enough to stop them from coming undone in a crash. Yikes.” 

When did adults begin using that word?

“These seats are still floating around out there,” he warns – as if there were something to be alarmed about. He found a Facebook marketplace ad for a set and practically soiled himself with an eructation of obligatory indignation that others might not be as alarmed as he pretends to be. And may actually be.

“I won’t blow up the guy’s spot, but he said that the seats came with a JK Wrangler Unlimited he recently bought but he doesn’t want them. He even goes so far as to mention the company is out of business but neglects to actually say NHTSA deemed them extremely unsafe. Kind of a jerk move if you ask me.”

Andy Kalmowitz

Well, who did ask you?

And NHTSA – the federal “safety” apparat – also says it’s “safe” to drive around in vehicles equipped with acknowledged-to-be-defective and dangerous air bags that have killed and maimed people, while the owners of vehicles so equipped wait months for replacement air bags to become available and for a dealership to slot them in to have the acknowledged-to-be-defective air bags removed and replaced.

The “safety” apparat will not even countenance temporarily disabling the known-to-be-defective air bags until they can be replaced.

NHTSA also hasn’t been especially alarmed about Tesla’s defective AutoPilot/self-driving technology, which has killed a number of people.

So it’s no more a “safety” issue than sending $100 billion to Keeeeeeeeeeeeeeev is a “national security” issue.

But are rear-facing seats “extremely unsafe”?

Is riding a motorcycle?

Is driving an old VW Beetle?

All entail a certain degree of potential risk. But this is not the same thing as actual harm. The distinction is important – and it’s also one we used to be able to make (and decide) for ourselves.

Of course the risk of being injured while riding in the bed of an old Brat in rear-facing jumpseats entails an increased risk of more (and probably worse) injury if there is a crash than riding up front, all buckled-up.

So?

It is also riskier to swim in the ocean than it is to look at the ocean. To take a chance on something that might be exciting or fun – even if it means taking a chance you might get bitten by a shark. Almost no one actually gets bitten by a shark. It is a one-in-a-million risk and probably less than that. Which is why millions of people go swimming in the ocean.

The slight risk is worth the actuality of the reward.

That was once the thinking of most people when it came to cars. Only a few professional neurotics such as Ralph Nader and Joan Claybrook thought about “safety” – and nothing else. But their neurosis spread – very much as hypochondria has spread – such that both are now the dominant thinking. You never see car commercials that are like the car commercials of the past – that touted excitement, fun. Like riding in the bed of an old Subaru Brat, holding onto the grab handles of those rear-facing jump seats so as to not go flying when the Brat crested a hill at speed.

Instead, they tout “safety.”

And that’s precisely why there’s so little fun – or excitement – to be had anymore.

. . .

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53 COMMENTS

  2. I never had the pleasure of siting in a rear facing seat (that I can recall), but me and my brother did get to ride in the camper on the back of my dad’s pickup truck on the way to the lake for weekend camping trips. We even climbed up into the sleeping compartment over the cab so we could look out the window. And I remember climbing through the window that opened to the cab too! So much fun! Imagine road trips now a days with all the kids strapped down, unable to move. No wonder the kids today are broken.

  5. Eric, learned to drive on a 1952 Harry Ferguson tractor in 1972 at the ripe old age of 10. It had two safety features brakes and a steering wheel. My grand father was still driving it in the nineties. When he was close to ninety. It is still alive he is not.

  6. “He found a Facebook marketplace ad for a set and practically soiled himself with an eructation of obligatory indignation that others might not be as alarmed as he pretends to be.”

    Great sentence.

    1970 Country Squire! Me and my two siblings used to ride around unbelted in the back. The jump seats were bomb. No one died.

    Volvo made some excellent rear facing seats for their wagons. Also, no one died.

  8. Has the majority come down with “old-timer’s”…uh, Alzheimer’s or something? ‘Cause most of the Boomers/Gen-X’ers/Millennials have apparently forgotten about their/our childhood, and all the fun that we used to have, and more importantly, that WE SURVIVED said fun! How the fuck is it that damn-near EVERYTHING is “unsafe” now?! Do people literally think that as soon as the mafia known as “the government” declares something “unsafe”, that everyone doing that particular activity is somehow going to drop dead?

    • Oh yeah! High school early ‘70s, mandatory to jump the intersection at the Lutheran Church, from the tee to this spot about 1/4 mile. Got a new to you (used of course) car, load up the buds and off we go! All good till Jack’s ‘66 Mustang, that hump really launched the Mustang – “we’ve been airborne a long time” caboom! His brothers head hits the roof on the landing. Mustang OK. I refused to jump my Alfa Romeo.

      Finally told this story to my 30ish adult daughter – she was howling then “well Pop, apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!” Huh? “That intersection at 416th? Caught lots of air there in all the high school friends cars!”

      • RE: “That intersection at 416th”

        In my old hometown, I forget the street name, everyone knew it as, ‘roller coaster road’. Four wheels, got air.

        I imagine all the roads like it have been re-done & don’t exist.

        It’s probably even a crime now for a child to ride with their dad on a lawnmower.
        I saw a father standing behind the seat while teaching his son how to drive an old farm tractor across a corn field the other day. A rare sight. …

        Yah, our overlords are trying to eradicate us, & everything about us. It’s in the playbook:

        ‘Before He Died He WARNED AMERICA! Have you seen this?’

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE0Zlx14PU8

    • I would not count millennials in that group. They were the beginning of the “safety freak Karen moms” era.
      Also the govt. Not the millennials fault however.

  9. In summer 1961 age 6, road from south Seattle to Disneyland in the rear area no seats, family station wagon. Pillow, blanket, books, games. Bro had the rear seat in front of me, first family road trip. What memories! Breakfast at Sambos somewhere in L.A., Tiger Butter on waffles. The submarine ride at Disneyland. On the way home, Winchester House pretty creepy for a 6 year old. Dad’s friends house in the Malibu Hills a Japanese American family interned in WW II 16 years later back on top, success! Mom and Dad raised hell in the ‘40s over that friends internment to no avail.

    Road trippin’ family tradition, Grandpa Jim and Grandma Alice Seattle to Arizona in the ‘50s the dry climate helped her arthritis. ‘48 Dodge no seatbelts no problem.

    My turn in the ‘90s, WA to Sturgis 5 or 6 times on the Harley – helmet stowed in Post Falls ID for two weeks head wrap only! Freedom is a glorious thing.

  10. “If you’re Gen X or older, you probably sat in such seats – and have some good memories of watching the world recede behind you as the car traveled on down the road.” -Eric

    My dad bolted seats into the back of his ’63 Chevy and I remember just this as we went on whole camping trips around the state. Never did I feel “unsafe” back there.

    • “Never did I feel “unsafe” back there.”

      Same here! My dad had a Ford Taurus wagon that had a small rear-facing bench, just behind the tailgate. We’d all chuckle every time the fully-loaded car bottomed out on a speed bump or a curb. Of course, we’re all supposed to believe that everything beyond breathing is “unsafe” now.

      • Ford Taurus Wagon, straight out of Clark Griswold’s garage, huh? 😀

        ‘Of course, we’re all supposed to believe that everything beyond breathing is “unsafe” now.’

        Yeah, Bluegrey, I’m a bit more cautious these days, but people have gone insane with this “saaaafety” obsession.

        Now, perhaps I was a more carefree youth than most these days. I remember being 16, smoking a cigar while surfing on top of my friend’s CRX. You get some sparks in the face doing that. Riding in the back of a truck, seats or not, wasn’t uncommon back then. So, riding in the back of my dad’s truck in some comfortable, recycled seats was the least of my worries. Better than being stuffed up front with my parents, most certainly.

  11. It is not as warm here as it should be.

    Mother Nature makes the call.

    Let Nature Sing!

    RIP, Dickey Betts.

    Cow’s milk is close to liebfraumilch.

    You need a mother to be born into this world.

    Always be kind to mother, she is a friend ’til the end.

    No lactation, no life.

    Can’t kill life, impossible.

    Imagine if you can.

  12. Nadar and Claybrook were not neurotic. Far from it. They were/are authoritarian, sadistic pricks that demand others kiss their ass.

    They are not fit for civilized society.

  14. Many of us Gen Xers who grew up around NYC will remember summer trips to Action Park in Vernon, NJ. Something that could never exist today, but which offered we who survived it experiences and stories of danger, excitement, and fun. Glad to have had a childhood when I did.

  16. My aunt and uncle had an early 70’s Plymouth Fury woody paneled station wagaon, “holy shit what’s a station wagon?” Anyway went in many fun trips with them, my three cousins, myself and my two sisters.
    Amusement parks, long trips to see out of town family, hell to go for ice cream. We used to sing 99 bottles of beer on the wall, and there was an old lady who ate a spider… Just great fun family times and memories. “But, but… that’s so Ward and June Cleaver boring! You can just hear the lefty kooks screeching… And… bbbbut dangeous! Rear facing seats! Oh dear mother of god the horror!
    These freaks exist to extract every pure once of joy from life!
    This is literally a war against living!
    But the human spirit will prevail.
    We just need to hunker down, win the war, and resume living the best life we can… Like Ward and June Cleaver.
    Wham another homer Eric. Thanks brother!

    • “This is literally a war against living!

      Exactly. They are enemies of not only freedom, but of life itself.

  17. LOL. I recall riding in the bed of my Dad’s 1966 Chevy p/u in a pile of incinerated poop. We used it in our garden. Ah yes. I miss those days, and I mean that. We were a tougher lot.

  18. I bought a Ford Station Wagon because you could use it for work and play.

    It was a great vehicle, I dumped it at a junkyard, should have revived it instead, but it’s been gone for good for a long time now.

    Always good to have a friend who owns a salvage yard and does mechanical work.

    It is a gift. The transmission was good, so the junkyard parted out the Ford wagon and made some money.

    Still have a good rapport, it was a blessing in disguise.

    Gasoline Alley and all of the nonchalant jazz.

    The recent reports about Ford quality, the engines, are negative. Ford has a problem and it won’t go away, metastasizing aggressively.

    Ford owner tells it like it is. Not a Ford buyer anymore.

    193,000 USD for a Shelby Ford F-150 is just plain stupid, pricing gone plaid.

    Soviet Union pricing too. Nobody can afford a Ford, any of them really, and apparently, you won’t want the 2024 Ford no matter what. Chevy, Dodge, Ford, all junk right from the get go.

    Charles Manson for President, even if he is dead. Doesn’t matter much anymore.

  19. Noise cameras

    The baseline infraction of 85 decibels that the cameras register……noise cameras violations….., which will lead to fines ranging from $220 for a first offense to $2,625 for a repeated default….New York….The citations — $800 for a first offense, rising to $2,500 for a third offense

    The legal limit in the U.K. for noise from vehicles is 74 decibels. In the U.S., the EPA says that between 90 and 94 decibels are the legal limit for noise.

    NOTE….But in 2026 the legal threshold goes down to 68 dB. ….screw all the ice cars…..

    It’s not just New York City. Knoxville, Tennessee; Miami; and sections of California are working with the UK-based company SoundVue to add noise detectors on streets.

    The U.K. has already spent almost $340 million on the systems it used for testing

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/04/new-york-noise-cameras

  20. Astronauts in the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo programs all had rear facing seats?

    My wife’s former crossover SUV 2007 Mitsubishi Outlander had a small fold down cargo area rear facing seat (I thought it quite a clever design) that a small child could use. Not safe?

  21. I remember those station wagons with the rear facing seats when I was a kid. I had two friends who parents had them. One time my friend and I rode with her mother in the back of the station wagon. The rear most seats had been folded down, and me and my friend were climbing around back there. The rear door window was open and we were like a couple of puppy dogs sitting there looking out and waving to people driving behind us.
    And then later that same friend’s parents bought an El Camino. One day her mom took us to the store and let us sit on the tool box in the back for the ride. I remember grabbing onto the chrome molding around the top of the cab as we went around corners. We thought it was a blast!
    And then into my teens I rode my ten speed all over the neighborhood and beyond, all with no helmet. Better yet, there was a steep hill about a mile from my house and if I pedaled real hard I’d get up enough speed where I could keep pace with the traffic (it was either 40 or 45mph).
    And yes I’m still here, and no I never had more than a scrape that could be covered with a band aid in all of my childhood.
    All of this “safety” crap is IMO doing nothing more than totally dumbing down and blunting the best parts of human nature. Looking back thru history it was the people who took risks (with few or no safety precautions or gear) that advanced technology and improved the lives of other people. But sadly now technology is being used to stifle risk taking and creativity.
    I just never thought that so many of those dystopian sci-fi movies I watched as a teen could ever possibly come true…

  22. Bought a brand new Brat off the lot in 1986 for $ $7500.The thing was practically indestructible except when it came to rust, New England winters took its toll on it unmercifully.

  23. As a child of the 70s I feel bad for kids these days. We had NO bike helmets no car seats NO air bags, drank out of a garden hose rode on the back of a pickup rode many thousand miles it the top bunk of a pickup camper.Learned to drive on a Farmall Super C at 10 years old, and lets not forget those mini bikes Honda ct 70s and ATC 90s….And guess what what Still HERE. F#ck these retards.

  24. Hi Eric,
    This low risk behavior can all be traced to Neolithic. Natural human that has lived for hundreds od thousands of years is high risk high reward hunther gatherer.
    Low risk low reward poeple started with farming. They became slave to their field and if some strong man came and asked of them fo obey x or to give part of grains to y they obliged because they are low risk thinkers. Low risk poeple will rather be well fed slaves than free with risk of starvation. With farming you also see stifling roles and general tendency to obey authority all in the effort to minimise risk.

    Minimising risk has always crated dystopia and unhappiness. Because it runs countrary to human nature. Low risk poeple taken to extreme should be happy with solitary confinement.

    Main problem with the world are geneticaly low risk poeple.

  25. Being hyper focused on safety is so completely gay. Yeah, let’s all freak-the-fuck out about L-brackets and things that might happen… but everybody line up for your experimental gene therapy! Because that’s perfectly fucken safe.

    That’s why “gay” is the perfect description because, at some point, there has to be a departure from reason to embrace that way of thinking. And to keep doing it after seeing the results is when we get to *retarded* — yet another perfect description of the vast majority of idiots populating our precious democracy.

    Gay and retarded. This is why we can’t have anything nice.

  26. Some of my best childhood memories are riding in the bed of a pickup truck. We rode on grain gravity wagons and cotton wagons. And we laid flat on a cotton module as it was being loaded onto a truck. Good times back in a less oppressive environment.

  27. Govco has been totally infiltrated with the Puritan mentality, described by H.L. Mencken as being driven bonkers by the idea that someone, somewhere, might be having fun.

    • There’s a guy on substack named Dr. Toby Rogers that basically says that most people have become autistic because they’re vaccine injured. In a recent article (“Many of the central tenets of progressivism are actually autistic traits”) he points out the official definition of autism includes this:

      “Insistence on sameness, inflexible adherence to routines, or ritualized patterns of verbal or nonverbal behavior (e.g., extreme distress at small changes, difficulties with transitions, rigid thinking patterns, greeting rituals, need to take same route or eat same food every day).”

      He points out how that leads to the desire to control everything and gives these examples as tenets of progressivism:

      – we must control the weather
      – we must control all speech
      – we must control all bodies
      – We must enclose the air and kill all viruses and bacteria

      And so forth. He left out “we must control safety and risk” and that’s a great deal of what I’m thinking is going on here.

      “The definition of autism sounds like a lot of academics we know because academia selects for high-functioning people on the spectrum.

      Medicine, the sciences, and the tech industry in Silicon Valley select for high-functioning people on the spectrum too.

      And who is implementing the control of speech via censorship, control of the weather via these crazy high tech schemes, control of bodies, attempts to control the air, and the narrative that supports all of this? High-functioning people on the spectrum in science, medicine, technology, and academia.”

      There might be something to that.

      • Aspergers Syndrome was first identified by a doctor from Nazi Austria, and was one of the few disabilities the Nazis did not attack, quarantine, or kill. I have suspected this was because (a) many Nazi scientists were on the spectrum and (b) someone recognized those on the spectrum are easily weaponized towards political and social ends.

        • When Hans Asperger submitted his research paper in 1943 Germany it was ignored. Always seemed strange to me ?

      • “most people have become autistic because they’re vaccine injured”……

        The slave owners want to keep the slaves as stupid as possible…just smart enough to tie their shoe laces….any smarter they might be dangerous….

        injured….that creates a customer for the slave owner’s big pharma…..and kills them off so they don’t collect a pension…a non working slave must be gone….

  28. The safety speak is illogical bs. If your vehicle is hit by another vehicle at speed, drives into oncoming traffic or crashes into a stationary object it is not going to matter whether you are in a rear or front facing seat. You will be a mess. I am fed up with pretexts for agendas being posed as concern for the well being of our fellow humans. In other words I am sick of people pissing on my leg and telling me it is raining. The latest low grade bs I was faced with is my BMW dealership telling me that the reason my 2022 will not allow me to reset the vehicle’s clock to account for daylight savings time is that this can only be done now using the myBMW app. Are you effing kidding me. The car has the setting. (Obviously). It has just recently been disabled to require the customer (sorry I realize that is an archaic concept) to sign up for the app. The pretext leading at some point to BMW making every setting usable only thru an app. I get it. I think its stupid but that is what all companies are starting to do. But stop telling me it is easier or better. You know it is not better and this is one of the more egregious snow jobs and amping up the stupid factor just goes to show how in your face all this is becoming. It’s like now they are just pissing right in our faces and laughing at us.

  29. “They are not certified as meeting Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards”
    Which concerns me not at all, since FedGov is one of, if not the most dangerous organizations in the world. Really good at killing people and breaking things. But we are supposed to believe it’s concerned about our safety? Fat chance.

    • All one has to do is observe how airbags were imposed on auto manufacturers by none other than Joan Claybrook who declared that “if one life was saved, it (airbags) would be worth it. The criminal part of this was when airbags were first mandated, they were overpowered, set up to protect an unbelted individual.
      How many vehicle occupants were murdered by NHSTA due to this insane mandate?
      I hope Joan Claybrook and her ilk are paying for it in the next life.

  30. Rear facing seats aren’t really a problem for most conditions. In fact most baby seats are set up for the kid to be rear facing because it was found that it was actually much safer and less stress on the back and neck, which are well supported in a crash. My guess is that rear facing seats are harder to airbag. Or the kids in the back of the Vista Cruiser staring at the tailgater behind you was a distraction.

    The only time I rode facing backwards for any length of time I got carsick, so I’m personally not a fan. But you do you.

  31. NHTSA deeming rear facing & sideways facing seats “unsafe” sounds like when the FDA was deeming Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin “unapproved, unsafe, ineffective COVID treatments” while at the same time deeming those mRNA COVID jabs “Safe and Effective!” Just the past 4 years should definitively PROVE to people that the government (and government agencies) can’t be trusted. Just wait til they start deeming EVs “Safe and Effective for the climate!” Such a propaganda campaign might be even HEAVIER than the one we saw for those mRNA injections falsely called VACCINES.

  33. Patrick Lawrence — a journo himself — rips the Lügenpresse:

    ‘I was reading along over breakfast last Thursday in search of the overnight news on the Israeli–U.S. genocide in Gaza when I came upon the headline in The New York Times, “Laundry Detergent Sheets Are Poor Cleaners.” Wow. This is a story The Times had been following since its April 5 opener, “The 5 Best Laundry Detergents of 2024,” but my friends on Eighth Avenue left me hanging. At last I could go forth into the day confident I was a well-informed American, altogether engagé.

    ‘[At] the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last Saturday evening … we heard Colin Jost conclude his 23 minutes of sometimes-pithy humor with his ode to what was most conspicuously missing in that roomful of feckless poseurs. “Decency is why we’re all here tonight,” the television comedian said with unfeigned seriousness. By then Jost, at bottom a court jester, had already told his audience of narcissists, “Your words speak truth to power. Your words bring light to the darkness.”

    ‘Yes, believe it, in the spring of 2024 people still say these sorts of things about corporate journalists. And the people so addressed take them to be true.’

    https://scheerpost.com/2024/05/02/patrick-lawrence-of-journalists-students-and-power/

    Smash the Media.

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