Tag: car safety

Seriously, California?

One thing that happens every January like clockwork is a whole bunch of new laws go into effect, and this year is no exception.

California has decided that kids must be kept in child safety booster seats — in the back seat, of course — until they are 8 years old or 4’9″ tall. If these child safety laws get any sillier, I may have to figure out how to drive from a booster in the back seat.

Was there any science whatsoever behind this law? Perhaps more to the point, any science that wasn’t produced by a manufacturer of children’s car seats? How many “lives” will this save, really? Is there any reason that a 4’9″ 7 year old is less safe than a fully grown 4’9″ woman? And who exactly are these 4’9″ second graders? If California seriously thinks there is a problem with car seat safety for young people under 4’9″, then just maybe they should send some California Department of Transportation officials to Detroit to ask for better safety from the seat and seatbelt already securely mounted in the car. Perhaps those same officials could talk to the guys in Washington DC that make the regulations.

Nope, it’s easier to make people buy a cheap piece of plastic and mount it in the back seat, lest they receive a $475 fine.

And that brings me to the other interesting observation about this law: it will be enforced disproportionately against those who can least afford it. It will be used as a tool to harass immigrants and people of color and women the cops don’t like. After all, some Rich B**** in a minivan has the money to buy the car seat, and the means to hire a lawyer to contest the ticket. In short, she will be a pain in the @$$ if she gets pulled over!

Bet it can’t be enforced on school buses or public transportation.

In Closing: on Religious Law; unemployment is no vacation; one more person tells me how “Liberal” the President is and I may lose it; scroll down to the revised jobs chart; free stuff; the downside is they will know where you live; and for those of you with weight/fitness New Years Resolutions, an entire community’s wisdom in one infographic.

Nice of him to notice, and Economic Bonus Round

I am glad to see someone with a high profile speaking out on this, and I sincerely hope other journalists start talking about it.

Now, about that economy.

The nicest thing I can say about the United States economy right now is that unemployment isn’t as bad as it is in much of Europe. Our economy lost jobs last month — and only partly because some of those temporary Census workers were let go — but the really awful part is that the number of workers went down. It isn’t that we had an abnormal number of people die or retire or anything like that, it’s just that over a half million people gave up on trying to find work. And that’s why the official unemployment rate went down.

Of course, if you just happen to have the right set of highly technical job skills, there are plenty of jobs. But — as Jill so ably points out — somehow or another businesses don’t think they should actually have to train employees to use very specialized equipment. I guess they are waiting for the “Qualified Employee Fairy” to stuff resumes under the door.

It’s also worth pointing out that the SBA is running out of money again, which means it will be even harder for small businesses to get money to ramp up operations and create jobs. I am no supporter of the SBA — everyone I’ve ever known that has ever talked to them has ended up with an application for a second mortgage — but this is crazy.

So when all is said and done, I think that more than being “still in the gravitational pull of the Great Recession” and perhaps headed for a “double-dip recession,” it is more intellectually honest to say that from the standpoint of the typical American, there is no recovery: we still aren’t finding jobs, we still are having trouble paying the mortgage, we are still declaring bankruptcy at an alarming rate. Fine, maybe our largest corporations are still making plenty of money, but without the American consumer having money in pocket to buy goods and services, GDP growth can only be somewhere between shaky and an illusion.

In Closing: Uncle Shelby; turns out the kids are bored and not learning the things they should; on the newly revised dietary guidelines; fun with Google auto-complete; biggest banks in the world (and the ones that don’t exist anymore; and please, please drive safely this weekend.

Two Sad Stories Involving Children

#1, in which Seatbelts Would Have Saved Lives

Yesterday, an ordinary looking minivan blew out a tire and clipped another vehicle. What happened next was horrifying. The van rolled multiple times. It turns out that inside that van were 15 people — in a van that normally seats 8 — only two of whom were wearing seatbelts. Thirteen children were thrown from the vehicle. Ten people were severely injured, five were killed, including a little kid 3 years old. One witness says there were “kids flying everywhere.”

Please, people. Make sure everybody in your vehicle is belted in. If that means taking two vehicles or getting a bigger vehicle, so be it. For that matter, check your tires regularly. This was preventable. The adults in that vehicle had a responsibility to do certain things to keep those kids safe and they failed.

#2, in which Grade School Kids Lack Almost Everything

Every city has a school like Vegas’s Whitney Elementary. In some ways, it’s like any other grade school in Clark County School District, one of the 5 largest school districts in the nation. It’s got a mix of students from all racial backgrounds, although it’s almost half Hispanic. It doesn’t have the best test scores, but the scores could be a lot worse.

However, of their 562 students in 2007-2008, 370 got free school lunches and another 62 got reduced price lunches. The principal estimates that 75% of the 622 current students have experienced homelessness or are at risk of becoming homeless. Because most of the families can’t afford much of anything, the school holds monthly birthday parties for all the kids who had a birthday, complete with cake and presents. The school has it’s own food bank, it’s own clothing donation stockpile. Every teacher has a story of a kid who needed help.

Now, say what you want about personal responsibility. These are little kids, all under the age of 12. Not one of them has any control over his or her circumstances. None of them can legally get a job, and frankly society is better off with them learning to read and write than becoming unskilled child laborers. There is a Christmas wish tree from these kids in my office. It will break your freaking heart. There are kids that just want a pair of pants that fits, or maybe a sweater. There are kids who asked for one toy, singular, that I could buy with the kind of money I typically have in my wallet. There is one family that all they want for Christmas is to have electricity!

So if it is in your heart to send something to Whitney Elementary, please do. If instead is in your heart to find and give to your own hometown’s version of Whitney Elementary, that is wonderful too. If all you can send is kind wishes and prayers or maybe spreading the word, it’s better than nothing.

In Closing: the best reason for Cheney to run for President in 2012 is that he thinks we run elections under Gallifreyan rules and won’t let him be extradited to the Hague (is this seriously the best the Republicans got??); The Life of Brian couldn’t be filmed today, and more’s the pity; I guess terrorists only count if they are brown; recycle small electronics with the USPS; yawning is good for you; obligatory item on controlling health insurance costs; Blue Cross BS demonstrates why we need reform now; I’m going to let the economists worry about whether this Dubai mess is a big deal (their Vegas investments notwithstanding) (sorry, a drop of 150 on the Dow doesn’t impress me anymore); WTF is wrong with Africa??; concentration of wealth; the importance of arts education; an a cartoon on commercial and industrial regulation.

What’s wrong with this?

From USA Today:

Women are driving longer into their pregnancies — often saving maternity leave until after giving birth — a lifestyle change that is leading to predictions of an increase in fetal deaths in car crashes.

What? Do they mean that at some point, I was supposed to have stopped working or going to the grocery store and maybe even just remained in my nice safe home until I went into labor?? Perhaps I should have called an ambulance instead of driving myself in the snow to the hospital where my husband was working? I swear I never got that memo!

Perhaps it would interest “journalist” Sharon Silke Carty that the average American woman has paltry maternity benefits: in most cases 12 weeks leave, with no pay, and that assuming she works for a company with more than 50 employees — fewer than half of all American companies — has been there at least 12 months, and has put in a minimum of 1250 hours during the previous 12 months. For most families, the “unpaid” part of that is a deal-breaker even if she qualifies. As conservative rag Forbes observed back in May:

And since the majority of women can’t afford not to work for a full three months, they also tend to return to work sooner than the law dictates. Perhaps that’s why in May 2008, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 55% of first-time mothers were working six months after giving birth. In the early 1970s, only 25% were working 6 months after childbirth.

So I am not sure what USA Today is on about when getting the vapors over pregnant drivers. Sure, it would be nice if Detroit gave a flip about anything but 6 foot tall men when it comes to safety in the front seat — reason #2 I buy cars from countries that have short women — but I’m not holding my breath.

In closing: political minefield; what’s wrong with this picture; small business getting the stimulus funds shaft, ensuring recession for the foreseeable future; credit card scam involves hiding your bill; how is a Vegas magic act like the CIA?; knives that the TSA never notices; Twilight models an abusive relationship; Nevada still not sure we need any of that there Real ID stuff; 9 ways to avoid holiday weight gain; Americans doomed to financial illiteracy (in addition to the more mundane illiteracy and innumeracy); and emo comic book characters.