Quote:
Originally posted by baltassoc
They still let in kids under two. I recently read an article (sorry, no cite handy) that discussed a controversial new proposal to require seats for those under 2; basicly Congress recently head testimony from CDC experts that this would be a horrible thing for safety: if even a small percentage of families decide to drive instead of fly, far more kids will die due to the massive disparity in the dangers of travel by automobile vs. airplane, and this increase in road deaths far outweighs any potential advantage of having an infant in a car seat on the plane.
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I don't think the proposal or the study are very recent, I learned about them in law school. The airlines first tried to institute the policy not so much as a matter of child safety (though it was that, too) but as a matter of general passenger and crew safety - babes in arms are commonly referred to by flight crews as "bombs" because of their tendency to fly through the air and blast into passengers at head-level in turbulence. This is obviously not good for the children, but also endangers the safety of everyone else on the plane. A small percentage of families opting for road-trips to avoid the added air fare, resulting in more traffic and thus more highway pile-ups, was found to cause more injuries (to everyone, not just children) than airborne infant projectiles, but I am not sure that the numbers worked the same way if you are just looking at risk to children, since the risk of injury to children on laps in planes is actually a lot higher than you'd think.
