The oral sex reference is the third rail, stay away from trying to start a panic there.
The car seat mania is just another “people for a perfect world” getting out of control. The 4 (years old) or 40 (lbs) was sufficient, but there were a few exceptions so they made it both (a 40lb 18 month old still needs a seat). At about 3 the bones harden and the skull is more stable, at about 40 lbs, most kids are big enough to fit properly in the vehicle mounted belts, but if they are built like a bowling ball, then it doesn’t work. The vehicle has a lot to do with it, some have adjustable anchors so it can be lowered where the lap belt starts, the trick is not let the belt come accross the neck of the child, so if they are too short, they need a booster to position them into the belt, but on better or newer cars the belt can be positioned correctly and it is better than being in a booster with a static anchor. The problem is that the poor and the uneducated do most of the breeding so most kids ride in crappy cars and have parents that have limited reading skills for the complicated seat instructions. Nor will they pp into the local police station to have a technician check their seat installation.
A few years ago there were checkpoints in the barrios where the cops pulled over everyone with a carseat and had a technician install the seat properly, show the driver how to do it and give free seats to people using old, broken seats. The problem is that there was special interest outcry because they ended up towing so many of the cars which were unregistered or driven by unlicensed drivers. The probable cause was questionable yet they cannot let unlicsensed or uninsured drivers just drive off because they accept liability if that person hits someone down the road. Since the courts don’t like the unfair catching of people breaking the law, their answer is more laws and more laws, in the end, the only people that will understand it and follow it, don’t even need it and the target audience will be ignored. But the elected officials will feel good about themselves and the car seat industry will buy them trips to vegas and hookers, which is really what our legislature is for.
