For soft babywearing carriers, the outlook is also grim. The kinematics of the baby, adult, carrier and airplane seat lead to crush injuries that are worse than the poorly restrained arm hold version.
Could there be a solution here that straps around a seat to give babies a safe seat?
Yes, but it wouldn't necessarily be easy to use or consumer friendly. The ideal solution would have the baby with their back facing front, and the attached carrier facing inwards towards the seat. It would have to be carefully specced and tested so no unverified, third-party seats... Logically extrapolated, in this scenario, the airline becomes responsible for the baby's wellbeing. And I don't think that's a good place for the airlines to be?
With our kids, we used two different devices. One was just a long strip of cloth that you tie in a special way. The other was a more structured carrier with straps and buckles and all that good stuff. For both of them, the child faces toward the parent, so they would be rear-facing relative to the plane. And both have an option to fully support the head. The main purpose there is just to protect their neck while sleeping or during moderate activity, but it would offer at least some additional protection against neck injuries in a crash, rough landing, or during periods of turbulence.
Perhaps crush injuries are more likely with the baby strapped to you, but honestly I would be more worried about a parent holding their baby being more likely to drop them in the aisle during an evacuation, which would be more likely to endanger everyone behind them on the plane as well.
that said, I've also heard that the US standards for car seats is piss poor relative to the rest of the world's. something about how they only test one head-on crash at 35mph and then extrapolate all the data from there. Germany's ADAC is supposedly the gold standard and I can see why - their tests are intensely comprehensive and granular, in the way you'd actually want them to be, and many of the seats rated safe by American standards fail ADAC: https://www.besafe.com/en/safety-tips/tests-awards/adac/
if there were to be a plane-oriented solution, the last place I'd trust it to be taken forward is in the USA especially given how easily corruptible safety-oriented institutions are here
The point is that the "return" - in a vanishingly tiny number of cases, the kinematics is very slightly better (maybe I buy that it is slightly better, without doing research, but it can't possibly be much better) - is not at all worth the "investment" - every single parent of every single baby on every single flight having to put up with a very real annoyance.
Aren't airlines responsible for the well-being of everyone on a plane? That seems like it kind of goes with the territory of charging money for hurtling people across the sky in a giant metal box.
If you (as the airline) did what the rules where that everybody else follows and the FAA mandates and the baby dies you can argue you did everything correctly and the rules are at fault.
If you however go your own special, non-FAA-approved solution, typically the burden of proof that this special solution is at least up to par with existing certified standards is on you, the airline and if a baby dies it is on you alone to defend that solution.
Meaning from the standpoint of an airline there is not a lot to gain, but much to lose if they do things outside established standards.
This may sound idiotic, but it also prevents other "creative" solutions where airlines sacrifice safety willingly to spend less money.
Rigid carriers are already permitted on planes, as long as they're FAA approved (which many are). You attach them with the seatbelt, and the flight attendants check.
What I'm proposing in this post is that the FAA not require parents to remove lab infants from babywearing carriers.
I was going to make a comment earlier about how my kids travelled in car seats years ago before I realized you were talking about lap kids without their own seat.
There is an existing international standard (ISO 13216) for child safety seats in cars:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isofix
It could be added to airplanes seats.
FAA calls all of these devices, in general, child restraint systems. Rigid seats with harnesses are allowed under FAA rules. The real consideration is blocked egress, since a large, rigid device strapped to a seat could actually make egress more challenging. That is covered in a more subjective advisory circular, which allows airlines to make policy, e.g., it may only be used at a window seat of a non-exit row.
Since FAA just this month has decided to start enforcing a 1992 rule requiring even so much as a paper cup to be stowed before pushback citing the egress concern, we might even expect some new policy on this.
you'll be dead so it won't matter much.
Hard landings, rough turbulence, runway excursions, etc are far more common and also situations where differences in restraints make meaningful differences in outcomes.
It's not a popular choice because you have to pay full price for the seat, so lap-carrying the baby can save quite a bit of money. Once the baby is 2, you can no longer lap carry them, so that option goes away. There's FAA approved options for small children for whom the lap belt would be inappropriate that are different from the infant seats.
This is religion, not science.
In this scenario, there isn't going to be evacuation. At best, it's search and rescue. At worst, search and recovery.
The poorly attached rigid seat, with a well-secured infant, increases the infant's odds of survival, but the mass increase reduces everyone else's odds of survival (including other infants and caregivers).
There are designs and policies where it becomes "worth it." But it would have to be study to figure out at what point the tradeoff becomes worth it.
It's a grim outcome, but great safety engineering is built on the worst case taken seriously.
I only ever heard/said this. Seeing it in print, I suddenly realize it must be "worse comes to worst"
there is a use for the other phrase (but nobody uses it this way), should the worst (thing) come to the worst (people), then... just desserts?
No it doesn't.
Too smaht for me to understand.
Can you explain your reasoning why is that the case with carrier seats but not with <literally_every_other_hard_object> including human bodies and their skulls which are way sturdier than plastic moldings?
Currently, aircraft seatbelts are designed for very quick release when needed with no training or muscle memory needed, shove your hand at your waist and pull the metal flap and it immediately comes apart. This seems like it could be an issue with baby carriers, since a) you can probably expect a bit more complex arrangement of straps buckles and b) lack of muscle memory or training on presumably a different style of carrier than what you ever ever use outside an airplane.
A second issue that comes to mind, how to do seating arrangements? Imagine a parent struggling to remove baby during a emergency. Imagine a 3 seat row window side, where others are stuck waiting for parent to release baby.
This seems like a certification nightmare
If you want a change and you want to make sure the right people see your request, I suggest you start here:
Yes, almost every baby carrier would likely restrain the infant better than add-on infant belt if the adult lap belt rides up over the infant carrier, the infant's going to be crushed between the adult and the belt. Not a good outcome.
Thus you're likely going to need FAA-approved infant carriers, same way as you'd need FAA-approved car seats you can take on planes.
I was quite worried that my wheelchair would break in some way like I've experienced several times before but everything went quite smoothly! AI helped tremendously with planning, e.g. here's Claude: https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/6c977d23-1b7c-4a00-a7aa-d...
If the adult is pitched forward with the child strapped to their chest (facing inward) then they risk bending the child’s spine backwards.
> A lap-belt restrained adult dummy in an aircraft seat, with an infant dummy in a carrier, was subjected to a 9G dynamic sled test. The severity of the pulse was based on the results of a static load test. The commercially available infant carriers tested were not able to restrain infants under crash situations.
https://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/research-and-analysis-r...
It seems strange to disallow the carrier, have the belt that loops through the adult belt but then if the plane is going down you have to get them into the same position they'll be in in the carrier anyway!
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PFAS bans are another where the whole class is likely hazardous but EPA will continue chasing specific molecules rather than consider the whole class.
Now adays, chem engineering will just put different monomers in and move on untill 20 years and we find, all things considered, it still reaches humans at toxic levels.
That would make my flying a bit nicer.
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here's the /s for those of you who are tonedeaf.
I really don't understand people who accept inconveniences for themselves or for other people without any interest in examining whether those inconveniences are serving any useful purpose. Everything like this should be interrogated. Yes, most things don't matter at all, but we still shouldn't do them if they're dumb. Some things - like this example - matter a bit more. It's not the end of the world, but waking up a sleeping baby can easily ruin the rest of a family's day. If there is a good reason for that, then no biggie, if the reason is nonsensical, then no.
If you’re being guilt tripped into switching seats so that a family with a young child can sit together, consider blaming the airline for not automatically seating a young child next to their guardian.
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In terms of CO2e, a familiy of 2 + a kid driving a car instead of flying results in quite a bit of less emissions. Depending on the assumed mortality per tonne CO2e, driving might lead to a lot less deaths.
This is of course quite unreliable data, but one example of just to say how "all things considered" is very hard and almost always still comes down to a judgement call.
ADAC is indeed the main test, but even more difficult than getting a good ADAC score is passing the plus test[1], which focuses on neck spinal forces.
[1]: https://www.vti.se/en/services/laboratory-and-testing/crash-...
I wish the Plus test included detacheable rear-facing seats too. we dropped quite a pretty penny on the Cybex Cloud T because of how well it scored elsewhere
I wouldn't want a third kid just because I don't want to deal with carseats anymore.
You can buy special car seats that can fit 3 across even in the smallest cars of Europe.
How do you define piss poor? The stats show that the US minimum standards still reduce fatal injury risks substantially. And your comparison point for 'rest of the world' is a German automobile club, not a government regulation. Would the better comparison be to ECE R129 for the EU?
> something about how they only test one head-on crash at 35mph and then extrapolate all the data from there
You know that the information is readily available and you could avoid spreading misinformation with a 10 second search, right?
The US regulation, FMVSS 213/213A, does a frontal crash at 30 mph as well as a side crash test at 30 mph. For apples-to-apples comparison, the EU regulation does a 31 mph frontal crash test and a 19 mph side test. All of the governmental tests are done on a standardized test bench. The German auto club test is 40 mph frontal and 31 mph side, done in a regular car.
There are also organizations in the US that do testing and ranking beyond the regulatory minimums.
US automobile safety ratings/improvements over time are largely driven by IIHS (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety). It's a private group but is the standard yardstick manufacturers expect to be tested against and fills in a lot of gaps in NHTSA official crash tests.
It wouldn't be strange to see IIIS plus NHTSA criteria used colloquially to describe "US crash standards" when talking about cars even if not fully defined by regulation.
"UL Listed" products or the International Building Code (the base model broadly followed with modifications by each state) are also "national standards" but not set by regulation.
so what do those stats say vs Germany, Sweden, the EU average? all very easily searchable, no mechanistic theorycrafting required. how does the US fare? certainly not multiple times worse across the board, right?
Would it? How much of the statistics are attributable to a difference in standards vs the higher average speed and larger average vehicles in the US? Physics is a harsh mistress, both of those factors have a lot of effect on crash energy.
What parent in their right mind is bothering to bring a baby carrier and can’t manage to secure it?
I can't imagine that percentage goes up when strapped for time and under pressure during aircraft boarding.
https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/national-car-seat-check...
My guy a car seat will do nothing in a crash.
> When our babies were little, carriers were massively helpful in flying. The baby likes it, and your arms are free.
> The carrier means the baby can sleep wherever we are, and I can have my hands free. If you can breastfeed in the carrier, even better because the baby can eat as you’re navigating the airport, etc. Carrying the baby centered on your body is easier on your back than carrying them in the carseat. Plus it’s good for walking / sightseeing at your destination.
Notably, though, German carriers like Lufthansa do not allow it, which I believe is due to German regulations. Outside of that, we've never had an issue in either the U.S. or Europe, but occasionally we need to show the airline a copy of their policy from their website on one of our phones. They weren't mean about it, but may not have seen one. Generally, the senior flight attendant is experienced enough to know the rules.
Our kids were huge, so we used it from before they were a year old and it has been very helpful.
Everyone loves to say this from the comfort of their arm chair somewhere in an ivory tower but literally every aviation and adjacent workplace has a phrase to the tune of "here we cut stupid corners, cutting smart ones is illegal"
Which is to say, the do-gooders in their infinite wisdom have blocked progress on various axis, some of them no-brainers, some of them the most reasonable ones, because once upon a time someone took it too far and something happened. So all investigation of where to save money, where to find improvement, etc, etc, happens on axis of optimization that are frequently absurd. This is where most of the "creative" solutions you deride come from.
And such bodies do exist, e.g. the ARAC (Aviation Rulemaking Advisory Committee) or specially formed ARCs (Aviation Rulemaking Committees). Whether they are capable of producing the desired innovation or if not, why, I can't tell.
But I don't buy it: https://www.jefftk.com/p/three-car-seats
I got anecdata of people shopping for gargantuan 3-row SUVs so they can accommodate the third child seat. Most people don’t seem to mind as it’s “only” a monthly payment. (Over 8 years it’s a fortune in interest let alone the actual cost of the vehicle but most people don’t think that far ahead)
(Sorry, meant to reply to parent)
Scenarios without evacuations are ones where nearly everyone or everyone is already dead. That’s not a case to optimize for.
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I suspect it leads to more people not travelling at all (or much shorter distances) and net saves lives in both the relatively immediate travel sense and even moreso in the broader analysis including net carbon emissions and their effect in climate change.
(It is still a mix of corrupt corporatism and authoritarian conditioning that should be ended for that reason.)
In Europe (and the US Northeast Corridor), I do favor trains to avoid going to and dealing with airports, but they're no panacea either. And I say this as someone with the various passes that make flying easier.
Honestly, it would be faster and possibly cheaper for me to drive to Manhattan than take the train--in which case security doesn't enter in at all. And certainly for two people. But I hate driving into Manhattan.
Not sure how old you are but bombings and hijackings of airplanes were just kind of a common fact of life when I was a kid and I was there on 9/11 as well.
There's at least some element of Chesterton's fence that could come into play here.
I had two recent trips to the same destination. I drove once because it was so much cheaper (during the world cup when air fare was jacked up) compared to the train or flying. I flew the other time, because it was only a little more expensive and flying is faster and less of a hassle, actually.
Additionally, given the article talks about families, the cost comes down a lot with multiple people in one car vs multiple plane tickets. If we want to make travel safer by putting fewer cars on the road, make alternatives cheaper. They're already more convenient to me...
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Is this really why the rule was made? Did they really have safety of driving in mind or is this just in the interest of the profits of airlines?
It seems like if they really had safety in mind there are better solutions:
* Subsidize the 2nd seat for parents with children from tax dollars
* Criminalize many intentional driving violations
* Build high speed rail
Yes. There are multiple public documents showing this, ex:
> The FAA has determined it is not appropriate to mandate the use of CRSs in aircraft now. We remain concerned that if we require children under 2 years old to be in an approved restraint system (which requires a passenger seat), affected operators might find it necessary to charge a fare for transporting these children. (Currently most, if not all, operators do not charge a fare for children under 2 years old who are held in an adult's lap.) In turn, for economic reasons some adults might decide to drive in automobiles to their destinations rather than fly. The FAA is concerned because automobile injury and fatality rates are higher than aircraft injury and fatality rates. As a result, there would be a net increase in transportation injuries and fatalities as families opt, for economic reasons, to drive rather than fly to their destinations.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2005/08/26/05-1678...
> * Subsidize the 2nd seat for parents with children from tax dollars
That's not something the FAA or DOT can do.
> * Criminalize many intentional driving violations
That's not something the FAA or DOT can do.
> * Build high speed rail
That's not something the FAA or DOT (unilaterally) can do.
I mean, the head of the FAA and the head of the DOT can have a coffee chat with the president and get an executive order then? Anything is possible to do, apparently.
I got to present in front of the aeronautical charting group, they discussed, and took up my change. It was a surreal experience. The level of depth, care, and just breadth of considerations to flip every possible stone to make flying infinitessimally safer was truly awe inspiring. The fact that me, a at-the-time-not-yet-even private pilot, was heard and taken super seriously, was equally amazing. Fully agree -- these people are the best in the biz.
In a full on crash situation infants are not going to do well, so optimising for much more likely turbulence injuries (for which having the baby strapped as securely as possible is definitely a good idea!) seems more important.
Kids are already subsidized with free gate checking of strollers (to be fair, so are other things like skis on Alaska).
Having said all that, if I thought I could get the baby out of the sling without waking them up, I'd probably try that first though. (I'm pretty sure most flight attendants aren't enforcing this silly rule to begin with, because I'm pretty sure I would have experienced it if they were, I used these slings / carriers all the time, including on planes.)
Uh, you'd be surprised. Once you refuse, they are going to insist, and if you still refuse to comply, or they're going to return to the gate and have your ass removed. They don't pick and choose which rules to enforce.
And yes, they do enforce this rule. We experienced it all the time when my son was a baby.
If the flight attendant did stand there, I would probably wait for awhile for them to decide to move on. I would certainly not become angry or loud or aggressive (definitely a bad move). If they really can't let it slide, I'd probably stop being stubborn at that point. But an initial polite "no" seems like a reasonable battle to pick even so.
I predict they will not let it go, and it will escalate to escorting you off the plane. It's a violation of federal law to allow you to keep your child strapped in, and the attendant risks losing their job.
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So for example: while booking you get to select those options, and while they load the luggage, an app on some crew tablet quickly arrange the seats and hit submit, the rails automatically do the jobs! Ycombinator, prepare that VC funds!! ;)
There's no way, in my experience, that they'd have time for something like that. Especially since anything that moves will invariably have mechanical issues from time to time. I've had to sit in a broken seat before because they simply do not have time to fix it between flights.
Much harder to keep them entertained them at home lol.
I have encountered this many times flying so it’s not “no one”. It’s usually younger couples who either don’t know what they are getting into or just have the energy to deal with it.
On international flights from the US it’s common to hear the reason is to bring the baby to see extended family.
The expression means that X is the best of unpalatable options to accomplish something else, where X is taken in a literal and narrow sense.
People don’t fly with babies for fun. They do it because visiting grandparents is fun, and driving isn’t a good option. Or, if it involves a trip across the ocean, the alternative would be sailing.
there is literally no such thing.
its like people who say that parental leave is a vacation. wildly miss informed and completely tone def.
We have child-free hotels, child-free restaurantes, maybe now child-free airplanes...what's next, child-free cities?
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I would guess that in most cases, someone is flying with an infant because they are going somewhere important and traveling with their infant was the best option available to them.
Traveling by air (or at all) with an infant is not fun and I can’t imagine that ever being anyone’s first choice.
So when you see frazzled parents at the airport with their young children, assume the best and be kind.
She slept like a baby for most of the 5 hour flight and only cried once for maybe 60 seconds when she got hungry and I had to prep a bottle.
It definitely didn't seem like "babies experience a lot of pain" holds true at all if you plan for it
But that’s it: we don’t do other flights with the kids
“What is so important that you need to take a baby on a plane” and “Have you thought about driving instead?” have got to be some of the most clueless and unempathic takes I’ve ever read. Ironic considering that’s what you’re accusing parents of.
Yeah and fuck them, right? Won't these parasite breeders learn that they have no right to take vacations? They should experience nothing but misery until their children are 5.
Unrelated, why are so few people opting to have kids?
See this is what has bugged me so much about how common anti-natalism has become. It has become diluted but present everywhere.
Children are a part of our society. They are a part of your community. They are going to be around you, they are going to be where you don’t want them to be, they are just going to be present in general. And this can’t possibly be a safety argument, as planes I believe are the safest mode of transportation. If you’re worried about safety, then kids should never get in cars, which is also completely unfeasible.
So if it’s not about safety, then what is this really about?
You will not be worried about the baby in it's mother's arms if you crash land on a plane. In reality you don't want to be inconvenience. That's what happens when you live in a society full of different people though. Sometimes you have to wait as they load people in wheelchairs in planes. Sometimes a baby cries.
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> The FAA has one of my favorite examples of thoughtful rulemaking. They haven't banned flying with a baby on your lap, because the extra cost would mean many parents would drive instead. Since driving is far less safe than flying, a ban would lead to more deaths. I'd love to see more of this "all things considered" thinking around bans.
Vast majority of accidents happen on regular driven known routes not road trips.
I would expect far better from the FAA.
It is possible for this to be true while also simultaneously it being true that road trips are more at risk of accidents than regular routes.
By the time you had your third, would the oldest still even be in a carseat?
But even then, three car seats is doable even in small cars: https://www.jefftk.com/p/three-car-seats
you're also claiming a multiplier for fatality rates for car sizes. and there is a significant difference (https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/global-car-economy) but the fun fact is that all cars around the world are getting much heavier - the US isn't even the leader in terms of how much cars have ballooned, only in that the starting point was higher
but for changes like that, you can control for fatality rates across time, correct? what do those numbers say? have bigger cars led to increased fatality rates? the IIHS has that data. what's that trendline look like? and what about Europe? there's data for that here: https://road-safety.transport.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022... - page 10 seems to indicate a trend
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Driving small humans around in anything less than a hummvee is neglect. /s
> What parent in their right mind
As a parent, you would be extremely saddened to learn that many are not.
It's easier to accept red tape once you follow "something happened" down to the idiots who "took it too far". Progress is blocked along the axes your fuckups have access to, end of story.
If you don't like red tape quit playing grab-ass around heavy machinery.
<sigh> This is exactly the sort of sneering smugness that makes people rightly hate the safety guy and you are a bad person for as long as you continue to engage in it.
Who the hell has kids nowadays at that age? Not many in the first world.
Were I amenable, which I'm generally not, could probably drive 4 hours from my house into the city. (Almost always take the train.)
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It is what it is. Governments can't risk the bad publicity of a terrorist attack. A car accident doesn't even make the news.
For example: Spokane to Seattle is about 230 miles in a straight line, or 280 miles driving. A flight takes less than an hour (not even 40 minutes of which is spent in the air) and costs $80-130 one way. A train traveling 200mph nonstop would take 1 hour 24 minutes. Building high speed rail costs $20-$200 million per mile (the upper end of that is California HSR). If we optimistically assume $20m/mile, constructing the line will cost $5.6b. If all SEA-GEG passengers (677k per year) choose to take rail instead of flying, and we want the project to pay for itself after 50 years, then each ticket will need to cost $165. This also assumes no cost to maintain or operate the rail line.
I wonder if we could not get most of the benefit by doing substantially cheaper options like separating freight from rail on major routes, electrifying parts of it where feasible. And maybe taking specific segments in areas where the track conditions are already favorable and increasing the maximum speeds on those segments. Probably two-thirds of the route between Portland and Salem, for example, is already suitable with modest upgrades to hit 125 mph. And basically all modern trains are capable of that speed already.
Trains, even HSR have essentially zero hijacking risk relative to airplanes, and proper safety interlocks make them very difficult to use the vehicle as a weapon.
At that point, your terrorism risk is approximately on level with any other dense transportation interconnect.
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> all these silly rules [tray tables and seat backs for instance, seat belts...]
Most of these rules are based in sound research, and were created to avoid repeats of things that exacerbated deadliness of previous air accidents. Calling them silly really makes one look like the sort of know-it-all who thinks that the whole aviation industry is dummies. Exactly the sort of person who bickers with FAs trying to inform you of the safety rules.
PS: I support the baby carriers myself. Argue it with the FAA, not with the FA on a plane.
Just being a flight attendant doesn't make them great humans to be around.
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Yes. That is exactly how it’s supposed to be used. The vast majority of people do not enjoy the airport/airline experience and were there any other reasonable way to get where they are going they would probably take it. They are not doing it because it is fun, they are doing it because they have to.
small kids are always lots of work and this its pretty hard to have a vacation.
i agree that visiting fam is the best, partly bc they will help with the kids :)
Nevertheless, you have made a decision not to have kids and that decision is worthy of respect even if it rests on shaky logical foundations. But you should similarly respect people’s choice to travel with their children and appreciate that as someone who has opted out of that part of the human experience, you have no insight into it and shouldn’t be making statements about disincentivizing parents from traveling with their children. Ultimately, children are just small people. If you can’t deal with interacting with that subset of the population, I suggest you fly private. Or… don’t fly.
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and if you want my personal opinion, anyone who feels crying babies are disruptive is an asshole. i am not saying that lightly. parents are not just flying for fun and letting their babies cry to torture you.
as a society we need to be more child friendly and supportive of parents. especially when they have a baby in distress. this whole idea that children should always be quiet and never bother adults is absurd, and only really found in western culture. that doesn't mean kids should be allowed to get away with anything, but a crying baby is not something that can just be stopped until the parents can identify the cause, and we should have some tolerance for that.
Parents have lives and families and obligations. Kids are along for the ride until they can exert their own autonomy. That’s how it has always been and that’s how it will continue to be.
its not like magically one day they are old enough to just "get it" by being explained. when was the last time you really understood something only conceptually without any kind of experience with it. its the jobs of parents and society* to safely expose our kids to the situations that they need to experience to learn how to function on their own.
Like to use the airplane example its not like parents just do it for fun and also every parent does stuff to try and give their kid the best ability to cope with the pressure change. snacks, pacifiers, timing flights around naps. its not like they are just like "eh, suck it up kiddo".
*there is a much longer diatribe about how even if you don't have kids or hate kids or never want to be in 100 ft of a kid its still your responsibility to society/biology to help make sure the next generation is raised. And maybe you could fulfill that responsibility at the literal bare minimum by managing to have a little compassion and understanding and not rag on parents who are (even by choice) doing something really hard with their kids. (flying)
It's giving: "people want to have kids but also still want to do all that fun stuff they did but now with a kid because whatever, the kid will deal with it".
In fairness, I _do_ agree that there are some things that need to be given up as a parent of young kids... Don't take your kids to a fine restaurant. But at the same time, I don't think children should be excluded from 95% of things because it inconveniences someone else. If it were about preventing people from inconveniencing others, then I think there's a strong argument that it's more than just kids that shouldn't be allowed to do the "fun stuff".
I somehow doubt when correct in absolute numbers lap infants are saving any lives.
Run the model in AI on real cohorts and absolute numbers it’s a wash at best and an urban legend at worse. 5 lives saved over a decade. Toothpicks on a plane likely killed more people than that.
To be clear but the NTSB and the American society of pediatrics have both said the FAAs math here is totally bunk.
I always heard people say most crashes happen close to home and I never thought twice about what they were actually saying.
Then one day it hit me: most people don't regularly drive far from home, so of course of accidents happen close to home.
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