No higher survival rate for kids 2+ in CR vs sans CR

How would you respond to this?

"Here's some reality:

In kids ages 1-4, car seats are only about 50% effective in saving lives as compared to completely unrestrained children.

In children over 2, there is NO, I repeat NO higher survival rate in car seats as opposed to seat belts. In case you don't get that, there is no demonstrated benefit for the use of car seats over seat belts past the age of 2.

All of which I point out only to highlight the fact that the car seat movement is based in large part on wishful thinking and religious-type faith more than science."

These words came from a parent on a parenting board in response to a post about not using a car seat for a 9-month old infant.

This kind of lame-brain "reasoning" really ticks me off, but I have no studies/info to support the increased safety of restrained kids vs. unrestrained. Really wanted to hammer a response back to this idiot.

Thanks,
Kristin

They got the idea from Freakonomics...didn't she at least reference it? (tsk tsk)...there's been a huge hoopla over this among the CPS community. The real problem is, the researchers looked ONLY at the car crashes that included a death in the crash...not the millions and millions of injury crashes that occur every year. From a nationwide economic standpoint, it's not a great way to spend money...the amount of money spent on car seats doesn't justify the number of lives they save. But from a personal standpoint, that $200+ for a car seat is less than injury treatment for even a single fender bender (kids do NOT sit properly in seatbelts...even stitches in the forehead from flying forward and hitting the front seats cost more than a Britax Boulevard!).

Also, the authors were mainly arguing that we should be looking at better occupant protection in cars, such as built in car seats and boosters and adjustable seatbelts... But the way they put it forward, people are going to completely misunderstand them and toss out their current car seats, rather than lobby Congress and the Auto companies to change (it's taken DECADES to get shoulderbelts in the center of the rear... these folks will not do a thing unless the government forces them to )

Also, keep in mind that the authors of the article that inspired this thinking are economists. As we all know, a dozen PhD economists can all have a dozen different conclusions about interest rates, inflation or any other aspect of the economy, all based on some piece of "valid" research. They are not physicians, who see the results of injuries when kids defeat their seatbelt. It's much easier for a kid to squirm out of a shoulder belt and sustain severe lower abdominal injuries in a crash compared to a child in a 5-point harness. No, the child may not die and be counted in the statistics they used, but they might be hospitalized or permanently injured. Those authors are also not physicists, they completely miss how the laws of physics apply to different restraint methods. They ignored scientific method and peer review in their article, filling it with mostly conjecture. If you read through it, note the frequent use of the following words they use to qualify their conclusions, "might be misleading", "maybe", "if", "might", "don't prove much" or "perhaps."

Ultimately, their conclusions could show we've all been duped. They might be closer to the truth than the numbers the government and health care agencies have found in their research. Unfortunately, no safety research experts have yet put together a specific response to this article. Until then, it's only clear that the authors used poor methodology in their article. While that doesn't mean they are wrong, it still makes their conclusions very questionable in the mean time.

If they are right, many people can all be saving the equivalent of a carton of cigarrettes, a week of Starbucks or a couple cases of beer that they could have spent on a booster. If they are wrong, many kids will be seriously injured or die. I only wish they had taken the time to make a scientifically sound article that had been peer reviewed by those in the relevant fields before publishing an article that will certainly cause at least some parents to eschew child restraints. Their motive seems altruistic; they claim some net cost savings to the nation. Keep in mind that the large public relations and media campaign where they've been touting this new research is primarily to promote their new book...

You can find some statistics at these sites:

http://www.chop.edu/consumer/jsp/division/generic.jsp?id=77971

http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/childpas.htm

http://www.usa.safekids.org/content_documents/MVO_facts.pdf

http://www.chop.edu/traumalink/download/2005/pcps_cpsrprt_05.pdf

http://www.chop.edu/traumalink/download/2003/pcps_allstate.pdf

I bought the audiobook, and kept listening and listening and listening for them to get to this huge revelation about the car seats, and it was 2 thirds of the way into it, and was hardly more than a page. They have blown this up SO much in their NYTimes pages, it's ridiculous (I guess some of their other revelations, like why Real Estate agents don't always get the highest price for your house, are pretty dull by comparison! lol).

Publicity..... that's what it mostly is. If they CARED about kids, they would have presented their arguments in a much more careful manner to people who are in a position to do something about the problem, IMO.