NTSB want FAA to require child restraints for all planes, including GA

I agree. Ciara was always in a car seat until she outgrew them. Now she gets a booster if the seat belt doesn't fit her properly.
 
My brother recently flew with his two sons (4 and 3) so they were old enough to have to be in a seat by themselves. He had the two booster chairs with him so they would be legal when they got to the rental car so he put the boosters in the plane seat so they could look outside. He was told that that was not allowed because it was a safety hazard (he was using the seat belt to keep the boys in), yet the 18 month old standing on the mother across the aisle, was totally legal.

Sheesh!

If this comes to pass it would be fairly easy to incorporate because anyone traveling with a child needing the seat/booster is going to have one with them for their destination anyway.
 
More nanny nonsense. Seatbelts save lives, child seats do not and in fact make things worse in some cases.
 
ClimbnSink said:
More nanny nonsense. Seatbelts save lives, child seats do not and in fact make things worse in some cases.
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Yeah, all those test results proving their effectiveness when properly used are pure nonsense.
 
It's the seatbelt not the childseat. But you go on believing what the car seat lobbyists told your representative.
 
That whole lap child thing has always seemed like insanity to me. My kids have always been secured in planes, both mine and in airliners. Why on earth would you try to save a buck by not spending money for a ticket for an infant?????? Insanity.

I'm hard pressed to see a situation where a car seat would put a kid at a disadvantage. If there's a problem, it's because people have no idea how to install them. A properly installed child seat is waaaaaaaaay better than the alternatives. You could 1) Not belt them or 2) Belt them with an adults seatbelt for which the shoulder strap is conveniently at neck level.

Too many imbeciles putting their kids at risk. I don't have a problem with child seat laws. Once you get old enough, say 18, to make your own decisions then fine. I also say people who drive without seat belts are imbeciles, but that's another story...
 
Our kids (now 16 and 20 years old) have flown with Mary and me since birth. They were ALWAYS in child seats -- first the "buckets" for infants, than the car seat, and finally the booster seats -- until they were tall enough to sit without them.

For one thing, they effectively immobilize the kid in the plane. This is important, when you've got a "pilot-in-command" in the left seat, and a "parent-in-command" in the right. You do NOT want a little kid crawling around the airplane, possibly distracting the pilot.

Second, it raised the kids up high enough so that they could see out the window. This is another essential function of the car seat that keeps peace on board the plane. You do NOT want a kid crying "I can't see!" because he's too short to see out the window.

Finally, in the event of a crash, they will probably keep the kids safer than no car seat.

I don't know why the government feels the need to mandate this sort of stuff -- do-gooders just can't seem to stop themselves, now that they've been on a three-decade roll -- but using car seats in the plane makes perfect sense.
 
I think most of the child-seat injuries with cars, at least, can be attributed to not mounting them correctly. That's why air bags have warnings on them regarding small children.

I've never taken any young'uns flying, but offhand I'd say an appropriate seat, mounted properly, would be better than no seat.

In airliners, I'm always amazed that people who love their kids are willing to believe they can just hold on to them in the event of even an overrun. That's some pretty wishful thinking, and irresponsible, IMHO. The reason they believe it, I guess, that they believe this is because the airlines have always allowed it ("If it was dangerous, they wouldn't allow it").

I think it's a good idea, but maybe I'm just too cautious... I also don't see why we have to sit facing forward on airliners when we can't see anything ahead anyway. Sitting backwards would vastly enhance the protection offered by the seats (although you couldn't just turn existing seats around; they'd have to be re-engineered).

But like with the child-seat thing, the airlines either believe (or know through surveys) that the average traveler wants to face forward and save some bucks by keeping their pride and joy in their lap... and to suggest to their customers that they give more thought to the outcome of an accident would be bad for business. And of course, in GA, money is also the ultimate force in deciding what's adequate for safety, in most cases.
 
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Jay Honeck said:
I don't know why the government feels the need to mandate this sort of stuff -- do-gooders just can't seem to stop themselves, now that they've been on a three-decade roll -- but using car seats in the plane makes perfect sense.
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Probably because children cannot decide on their own, and like child abusers, some adults won't do the right thing without it.
 
rottydaddy said:
I also don't see why we have to sit facing forward on airliners when we can't see anything ahead anyway. Sitting backwards would vastly enhance the protection offered by the seats (although you couldn't just turn existing seats around; they'd have to be re-engineered).
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Our seats are normally in a double club configuration so half of them are facing backwards. I have often heard discussions among the passengers about who doesn't mind facing backwards. I have flown in a rear facing seat and probably the only weird sensation is when the airplane rotates and you are pushed forward (from your perspective) against the seatbelts. One time I was discussing the seat configuration with some passengers and someone said that in the military they often flew facing backwards because it was supposedly safer that way. I was going to turn all the seats to face backward for the return trip but I wimped out. I should add that our seats are easy to turn around, they swivel on the base. No tools required.
 
ClimbnSink said:
It's the seatbelt not the childseat. But you go on believing what the car seat lobbyists told your representative.
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How about sharing some of the facts you used to form your opinion?

I'm always happy to learn new stuff, but it requires more than "because I say so" to change my mind.
 
Who is going to vote against moving up the car seat requirements? Some adult females are under the kid size booster seat requirements. It is stupid. Cloaked as for the children. Want to save children? simply outlaw them flying in GA airplanes problem solved.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.c...nes-who-think-child-car-seats-dont-work-well/

January 5, 2007, 10:13 am We Are Not the Only Ones Who Think Child Car Seats Don’t Work Well

By STEPHEN J. DUBNER There is a very disturbing report in the new Consumer Reports about child car seats. Here’s an excerpt:
You’d think that in a car crash, infants in their cozy car seats would be the most protected passengers of all. But you’d be wrong, our tests reveal.
Cars and car seats can’t be sold unless they can withstand a 30-mph frontal crash. But most cars are also tested in a 35-mph frontal crash and in a 38-mph side crash. Car seats aren’t.
When we crash-tested infant car seats at the higher speeds vehicles routinely withstand, most failed disastrously. The car seats twisted violently or flew off their bases, in one case hurling a test dummy 30 feet across the lab.
Sad to say, I am not very surprised by this report. (You can read other accounts of the testing here and here.) When we wrote about child car seats, a lot of people responded angrily to our assertion that the seats do not provide much benefit, if any, over lap and shoulder belts for children over two years of age. But of all the arguments, not a single person challenged the central fact that the data seem to support: car seats, as currently built and used, don’t work nearly as well as every parent, every cop, every emergency-room doctor would like to think that they work. And the Consumer Reports testing confirms this to a rather frightening degree.
[Addendum: I should have specified, as one commenter below pointed out, that C.R. tested rear-facing infant seats; we argued against the efficacy of front-facing seats for children 2 and up, since the lap-and-shoulder-belt alternative for infants isn't at all practical. That said, our argument is hardly weakened -- and perhaps is strengthened -- when you consider that even the rear-facing infant seats, for which there is no alternative, failed the C.R. tests so badly.]
One of the most disturbing assertions in the CR report is that European car seats perform better than American models, which suggests that as much as Americans believe they are demanding superior safety, they are in fact getting inferior quality. And when it’s your child who stands to suffer — well, that’s pretty disturbing.
When we wrote the above-linked article on car seats, I had a really hard time finding a crash-test lab that would let me come in and run our own basic tests. All I wanted to do was to submit a child crash-test dummy to one frontal crash in a car seat and one frontal crash in a lap-and-shoulder belt. I got the feeling that the labs knew full well that the seats don’t perform anywhere near as well as they’re supposed to.
Finally I found a lab that agreed to run my tests. They wouldn’t let me name the facility, out of fear of losing crash-test business from the seat manufacturers, but the head of the lab told me he was a fan of science and wanted to help us test a simple theory. But then the engineer whose job it was to strap in the dummies and run the tests nearly refused to participate. He told me that it was idiotic — that of course the car seat would perform well, and that if we put one of his expensive dummies in a crash with only a lap and shoulder belt, the dummy would literally be severed in the crash test.
He was wrong, it turned out. The dummy came out of the crash without serious injury. As did the dummy in the car seat. But as Consumer Reports showed, when you put a car seat through a more realistic crash scenario, the results can be horrific.


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ClimbnSink said:
More nanny nonsense. Seatbelts save lives, child seats do not and in fact make things worse in some cases.
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While I won't argue with the irrelevant data you present on automobile accidents, given the facts and data as presented in the NTSB paper, your statement is clearly false on its face as regards aircraft accidents.
 
Have you ever met an increased regulation you didn't like?
Ron Levy said:
While I won't argue with the irrelevant data you present on automobile accidents, given the facts and data as presented in the NTSB paper, your statement is clearly false on its face as regards aircraft accidents.
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ClimbnSink said:
Have you ever met an increased regulation you didn't like?
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While that has nothing to do with the issue, yes, I have. But so what either way? The science tells us that in aircraft accidents, unrestrained kids suffer far worse than restrained kids. Isn't that enough?
 
ClimbnSink said:
... January 5, 2007, 10:13 am We Are Not the Only Ones Who Think Child Car Seats Don’t Work Well

By STEPHEN J. DUBNER There is a very disturbing report in the new Consumer Reports about child car seats...
Click to expand...
Okay, let's check out the report and see what it says. Hmmm...

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/...ats/car-seats-2-07/overview/0207_seats_ov.htm
Consumer Reports is withdrawing its recent report on infant car seats pending further tests of the performance of those seats in side-impact collisions.

A new report will be published with any necessary revisions as soon as possible after the new tests are complete.

We withdrew the report immediately upon discovering a substantive issue that may have affected the original test results...​

What have they had to say lately?
http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/...r-seats/overview/convertible-car-seats-ov.htm
A well selected and properly installed seat can keep a child safe for several years
Last reviewed: January 2010 ​

Shrug...
-harry
 
Ron Levy said:
While that has nothing to do with the issue, yes, I have. But so what either way? The science tells us that in aircraft accidents, unrestrained kids suffer far worse than restrained kids. Isn't that enough?
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Restrain em, but don't require kid seats. One more requirement that bad parents will ignore and the FAA will use to rule innocent pilots.
 
ClimbnSink said:
Restrain em, but don't require kid seats. One more requirement that bad parents will ignore and the FAA will use to rule innocent pilots.
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Perhaps I'm missing the logic, but how exactly is the FAA going to do that?
 
Obi Heed Kenobi said:
Perhaps I'm missing the logic, but how exactly is the FAA going to do that?
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Who is going to enforce the car seat in planes rule? Pardon me if I laugh at the first young eagles pilot to get 30 days on the ground because he didn't have a car seat for a kid. Worse will be tandem seat aircraft going in from shifting car seat/control interference. Ah well :crazy: unintended consequences matter little when it is for the children.
 
ClimbnSink said:
Who is going to enforce the car seat in planes rule? Pardon me if I laugh at the first young eagles pilot to get 30 days on the ground because he didn't have a car seat for a kid. Worse will be tandem seat aircraft going in from shifting car seat/control interference. Ah well :crazy: unintended consequences matter little when it is for the children.
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How does this support your statement that the FAA will "rule innocent pilots?"
 
ClimbnSink said:
Who is going to enforce the car seat in planes rule? Pardon me if I laugh at the first young eagles pilot to get 30 days on the ground because he didn't have a car seat for a kid. Worse will be tandem seat aircraft going in from shifting car seat/control interference. Ah well :crazy: unintended consequences matter little when it is for the children.
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In looking through the document, I only came across a definition of a child in one place.
Revise 14 CFR 91, 121 and 135 to require that all occupants be restrained during takeoff, landing, and turbulent conditions, and that all infants and small children below the weight of 40 pounds and under the height of 40 inches be restrained in an approved child restraint system appropriate to their height and weight.
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Since the average 8-year-old is more than 40 lb and 40 inches, you'll probably have to wait a long time before that Young Eagles pilot gets grounded.

But, getting to your original question, "Who will enforce the car seat rule?" the answer hopefully is <Mothers>
 
AuntPeggy said:
In looking through the document, I only came across a definition of a child in one place.

Since the average 8-year-old is more than 40 lb and 40 inches, you'll probably have to wait a long time before that Young Eagles pilot gets grounded.

But, getting to your original question, "Who will enforce the car seat rule?" the answer hopefully is <Mothers>
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Exactly and we don't need the gov't for that now do we?
 
So will this mean that FAA Approved childs seats will be required?
Will they have to be approved for each aircraft?

Look at how difficult it is to get Shoulder harnesses approved in some aircraft?

Brian
 
brcase said:
So will this mean that FAA Approved childs seats will be required?
Will they have to be approved for each aircraft?

Look at how difficult it is to get Shoulder harnesses approved in some aircraft?

Brian
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That's not really true, is it? My Cherokee doesn't have shoulder harnesses and it's no problem to have them installed. There is a 337 from every manufacturer of seat belts for it.
 
ClimbnSink said:
Exactly and we don't need the gov't for that now do we?
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Yes, we do. Having a regulation gives good intentions a solid foundation of written community standards. Laws and regulations specify what has been decided is a common standard. The question was about enforcement. The community is involved in enforcing community standards. In this case the member of community with the most at stake and thus the most powerful enforcer is <Mother>.
 
So we need it to be law so mothers can rat out pilots to the FAA for flying their babies around without a car seat?
AuntPeggy said:
Yes, we do. Having a regulation gives good intentions a solid foundation of written community standards. Laws and regulations specify what has been decided is a common standard. The question was about enforcement. The community is involved in enforcing community standards. In this case the member of community with the most at stake and thus the most powerful enforcer is <Mother>.
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ClimbnSink said:
So we need it to be law so mothers can rat out pilots to the FAA for flying their babies around without a car seat?
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The law ought to be such that the mothers are ratted out for allowing their babies to fly without a car seat. Child endangerment, don't you know.
 
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