My wife, who was raised in the middle east and claims that they don’t use car seats for babies, says that she knows that the baby is safer in her arms than a seat.
I know that she’s wrong, I’ve seen the video way back in drivers education of what happens when a mother holds a baby in her arms during a crash. What I would like to be able to do is show her, but I can’t locate any relevant video. Anyone know someplace where I might find it?
Can’t help with a video, sorry. but won’t she take your word for it?
If you tell her you’ve seen proof that a baby seat is safer than a mother’s arms then surely she should at least question her confidence in her own belief.
Lobsang: You obviously have never met my wife. 
She just rolls her eyes at me, and I doubt she’d beleive a report that’s written (since the nurses and doctors at the hospital have mentioned the same thing).
I honestly don’t think that she’ll carry the baby out of the seat, I think the fear of a ticket is high enough, but I’d still like to convincer her with video.
I have a video at work that was produced by Volvo about the safety of our cars. It has some footage of crash tests including babies and children. It also explains why an infant must use a reward facing child seat, and an older child can use a forward facing one.
I might be able to get you a copy of this VHS tape. E-mail me and let me know where you are.
Also I read an interview with Nils Bolin the inventor of the three point seat belt. He stated that in a crash of above about 8MPH no mother in the world would be strong enough to hold on to a chld due to the g-forces involved. I can’t give you a cite, but a statement from the guy who invented the 3-point belt is good enough for me.
Hope this helps
Rick
[obligatory Simpsons reference]
Lisa: Wait! Those aren’t crash test dummies!
Fourth Reich Motors Guy: This exhibit is closed.
Trouble is here (and I hate to be pessimistic, but…) if she is denying the benefits of proper child safety seats, she may well argue that the crash test footage is misleading because the dummy wasn’t able to hold onto the child like a real person would.
(she would be totally wrong, I hasten to add).
I also hate to be chauvinistic etc, but if hard facts don’t win the day, it may be time to invoke the ‘honour and obey’ clause from your marriage vows.
Sometimes at motor shows and the like, there is a test rig where you can be strapped into a car seat that runs down a short ramp, accelerating to some trifling speed like 5 or 10 mph, then stopping abruptly (the occupant is then asked if they would like to repeat the test without restraints and the answer is universally and emphatically NO!).
If you can locate such a thing, it would be an interesting (and, I believe, fruitful) experiment to ask your good lady wife to try it with a 20 pound sack of potatoes on her lap.
There is an interesting movie called “Fearless” that might partially convince her.
In the story, Jeff Bridges is in a catastrophic plane crash but survives. The plane crash footage actually may be a little hard to take, post 9/11, but it’s an important part of the story. He emerges unscratched even though many people died. He walks around feeling a surreal invincibility. He befriends another crash survivor, played by Rosie Perez, who is distraught over the death of her toddler. She was holding on to the tot during the crash, but lost hold of him.
Jeff Bridges wants to prove to her that it wasn’t her fault, but she won’t listen to anyone. Finally he straps her into his Volvo, makes her hold onto a toolbox about the same weight as her kid, and then he drives them both into a brick wall. The toolbox goes SAILING out her arms even though she is holding on as right as she can and crashes through the windshield.
It’s a pretty intense movie, but that one gruesome scene might be exactly what your wife needs to see.
Rent Fearless. Towards the end of the movie Jeff Bridges shows Rosie Perez that she couldn’t have possibly saved her baby in the plane crash they were both in at the beginning of the movie. In a rather drastic demonstration, he has her sit in the back seat of a car holding a toolbox that weighs approximately the same as her baby. He tells her to hold on as tight as she can, just as if it was were real baby. He then accelerates towards a brick wall and crashes going 30-40 MPH. The driver’s airbag saves him, her seatbelt saves her, but the toolbox flies out of her hands and through the front windsheild. She then realizes it was the stewardesses fault who told her to take her baby out of his seat and hold him in her arms (because he’d be safer) as the plane was going down.
Or just read Cranky’s post. :smack:
Interestingly enough, a woman sitting near me on a plane recently who was carrying her 8-week old daughter was told to take her out of the harness she had her in and hold her in her arms for takeoff. Why would this be safer than the BabyBjorn harness? It seems to me the harness would hold her more securely in the event of a crash than the mother’s arms could, as someone noted above.
I can only imagine that this sort of instruction is either based on the kind of faulty knowledge described in the OP, or concern that the infant might cry and upset other passengers.