alt Hacker NewsDo you think that car seat mandates (up to age 12 in my state) are good policy if the net effect is:
- a small reduction in minor injuries,
- worse childhoods and parenting experiences (difficult to quantify, but real),
- and a few hundred thousand fewer children being born in the first place,
- very few, if any, lives saved?
If yes, then cool - but I strongly disagree.
If no - then I think the evidence and details very much matter, and that's why I was happy to invest my time in them.
In the hypothetical scenario where car seats have only downsides, then of course I’m against a mandate.
There is a difference between cherry picking studies that back up your view point and how medical experts set policy though.
Experts review all of the data, and ignore outliers like a paper published in a law journal that suggests car seats are the primary reason families have shrunk from having three to two kids since the 80’s