Allow Carriers on Planes(jefftk.com) |
Allow Carriers on Planes(jefftk.com) |
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.
My guy a car seat will do nothing in a crash.
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.
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.
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.
you'll be dead so it won't matter much.
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?
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
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.)
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.
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.
> 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...
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...
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.
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!
If the adult is pitched forward with the child strapped to their chest (facing inward) then they risk bending the child’s spine backwards.
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.
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!! ;)
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.
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.
> 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.
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.)
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.
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.
(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.
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)
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.
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...
> What parent in their right mind
As a parent, you would be extremely saddened to learn that many are not.
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.