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As a parent with 2 young kids the massive size of car seats forced us into a larger vehicle.
by darren 7y ago
As a parent with 2 young kids the massive size of car seats forced us into a larger vehicle.
- jedberg 7y agoYeah this is a big one. You have to buy specialty car seats now if you want to go three across in a sedan. Admittedly, the seats are much safer (just like the wider cars), but it certainly is a problem.
- paulryanrogers 7y agoWider cars are often taller which isn't so safe for pedestrians or bicyclists.
- wernercd 7y ago"If you want to fit three across" Why is this limited to child seats? Not like Americans are getting thinner...
- bradenb 7y agoIt’s not. But 3 across is obviously important because your vehicle selection goes down significantly once you need to expand to a third row to grow your capacity.
- souprock 7y agoI can say from experience that vehicle selection goes down much more once you need to expand to a fifth row. There were just two choices, one from Ford and one from GM. Fitting three car seats across is still difficult, despite enough car width to have a 4-wide bench in the rear. Putting car seats in the back rows makes them hard to get to, so they should go in the second row or in the third row seat nearest the door. That gives reasonably easy room for 3, but some states would have had me needing 5.
- wlesieutre 7y agoFifth row? That sounds closer to a bus than a car. Not sure if serious.
- souprock 7y agoThe title/registration stuff does in fact say "bus", but I wouldn't call it that. It's just an extended body van. I get mildly accusatory questions when registering it for non-commercial use and when I go places that have per car or per family payment. I got the E350. It holds 15 people including the driver, which leaves me just one empty seat when I drive my whole family. Seating is 2-3-3-3-4 from front to back, with an aisle along the right side. Mine looks just like this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ford_E-Series_wagon.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ford_E-Series_wagon.jpg
- Kevin_S 7y agoYou have a 14 person family? Good lord my man.
- mitchty 7y agoFun fact, my mom was the 15th child of 16. My only sister and I worked it out, our grandma was basically pregnant 12 years of her life if it would have been back to back and exactly 9 months each child. So far nobody has been able to beat my late grandma for children count. Also soup, she made the best soup around. Just thought I’d throw that one out there. They were spaced out a fair amount though so not like she needed to bus all 16 around at the same time. By the time 16 was not in the oven the first few were already out of the house.
- microcolonel 7y agoI will add that these things do wicked powerslides on gravel roads. It's awesome, especially when all the seats are full.
- Lev1a 7y ago
- Lev1a 7y agoA few years back we got (with a bit of squeezing) three broad-shouldered adults into the back of a friend's Skoda Fabia hatchback [0]. Bit uncomfortable but we fit. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0koda_Fabia#Second_generation_(Typ_5J;_2007%E2%80%932014) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0koda_Fabia#Second_genera...
- phyzome 7y agoYou're not wrong, but it's a non sequitur.
- tomglynch 7y agoIt's selfish safety. It is safer for the occupants but it is not safer for the other car in the collision.
- alvah 7y ago"I'm going to buy a car that's safer for pedestrians / other cars in a collision, but less safe for my family" said one person ever.
- megablast 7y agoAnd that is why we need laws banning these. Someone should care about the non-drivers of cars. Or will we slowly move to tanks.
- dvdbloc 7y agoAaaand bring in the Tesla Cybertruck
- hinkley 7y agoSome day, there will be a Back To The Future remake, with a Cybertruck. “You made a time machine... out of a Tesla?”
- saiya-jin 7y ago> And that is why we need laws banning these You need those laws, because current situation doesn't fit you. I've heard the tank argument for last 20 years over and over. There are tons of use cases when bigger is required, say bigger family, lots of goods being transported etc. I don't have a big car myself, but such statements are pretty ignorant of reality. and what about all the cargo vehicles, trucks etc? If you want to punish those evil rich capitalists in good ol' communist class envy way, then I have few ideas - we should ban people changing phones in less than 7 years, have only 1 computer per family, every 10 years, only 2 pairs of trousers, no meat for anybody ever, in fact no car and of course only 1 kid max. Its for the greater good, right? What Switzerland does is, with its car tax is, at least in some cantons, the tax is calculated in equation which considers HP of the car and its weight.
- megablast 7y ago> just like the wider cars Safer for the people in the car, not outside it. But I guess that is the point.
- grp000 7y agoFrom the article in the first paragraph: "To comply with today’s stringent crash regulations – by passing offset, side and roof impact tests, as well as those evaluating pedestrian protection performance – cars require considerable cubic metres of controllably crushable bodywork."
- jakeogh 7y agoIf you mean other people not in cars then picking a lighter car wont matter for the people outside. Airbags on the outside of the car are the only real solution. 0.5mv^2 scales too fast for m1 to matter if m1 >> m2.
- fooblitzky 7y agoThe Evenflo Tribute LX is a very reasonably priced car seat (~$60), that has very high safety ratings, is parent friendly, and doesn't take up too much space. I regretted buying a much more expensive Nuna after we bought an Evenflo for travel.
- nautilus12 7y agoWhy are carseats so big? It can't all be safety. Do you think it gives a luxurious appearance and parents tend to buy them more?
- WillPostForFood 7y agoMostly safety because there is more focus on side impact protection. it leads to wider, wrap around designs.
- _ph_ 7y agoFor a single seat, the size makes sense as you want to have cushioning on the outer walls. But there is no good reason not to have double and triple seats which only has thin separation on the inner boundary of the seats (even just having once the default padding vs. twice would be a big win). So, if car manufacturers want to advertise "3 rear seats", they should be forced to offer child seating for 3 too.
- themacguffinman 7y agoI instinctively thought of high obesity rates in the US and other western nations.
- jethro_tell 7y agoFor babys?
- tropo 7y agoIt's for kids who haven't yet reached age 8 or a height of 4'9" (145 cm). That is the law. They could easily weight as much as their mother.
- brewdad 7y agoWashington state just changed their law. Now kids under 4'9" must use a booster up to the age of 16. Realistically, they have stated that 13 year olds will not be required to use a booster since, at that age, they are allowed to sit in the front seat anyway.
- dabeeeenster 7y agoWhere are you? In the UK you can easily fit 2 kids seats into something like a VW Polo or mini
- Silhouette 7y agoYou can fit two car seats in the back of mine as well -- but only if the parents are both under 5'6" tall and happy to have the front seats as far forward as they go. My car isn't one of these modern, ever-growing ones, but it's not particularly small in most respects either.
- Hates_ 7y agoNo way we could get 2 seats in our small 1-Series. While it's fine for my wife when in the passenger seat with the child seat behind her, the drivers seat would be far to forward if we were try to and fit one behind me.
- close04 7y agoIf you're talking about the BMW 1-Series this has a peculiarity that most small cars don't have: a rear wheel drive (or all-wheel in some models) and a longitudinal mounted engine. This means substantially less space inside, especially in the back with the higher floor and the drive shaft down the middle. I found the Polo a lot more spacious than that.
- inferiorhuman 7y agoStill I can fit a couple car seats in the back of my E46 wagon.
- inferiorhuman 7y agoAmerican car seats are huge. A friend of mine, who is not small – even by American standards, despises SUVs and ended up having to import a car seat from Japan for his spawn.
- 7y ago
- stopads 7y agoBzzzzt, try again. I can fit both kids and carseats in the back of my old tiny 2 door VW GTI.
- close04 7y agoThe Golf was always an unusually spacious car for its segment. Probably because of the more vertical hatch and a roof that's not so slanted as on most other cars. So the back seat can sit further back.
- rconti 7y agoespecially if it's an older one; of course there's more room!
- dang 7y agoHey, please make your point without being a jerk on HN. Your post would have been fine with just the second sentence. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- gameswithgo 7y agoAS a parent with 2 young kids, the huge car seats fit fine in a generation 2 toyota prius. While not a tiny car it isn't wide.
- lutorm 7y agoLength-wise, our car seat only fits in the center of the back seat of our 3rd gen, and even then we have to push the front passenger seat so far forward that you have to be pretty small to fit in it. We could probably raise the seat a bit more if needed, though, but it's already fairly upright.
- war1025 7y agoGoing to put in a plug for Diono Radian car seats [1]. We have a 4 year old and 2 year old twins. All three of them fit with these seats in the back of our Honda Civic. They are amazing and definitely worth the premium, in my opinion. [1] https://www.diono.com/us/product/radian-3rx/ https://www.diono.com/us/product/radian-3rx/
- keyle 7y agoSame. The 'compact' baby seat barely fits in our SUV!
- gpapilion 7y agoI’ve seen the same in full-size suvs.
- mattlondon 7y ago+1 I just installed my first iSize isofix car seat in what is a very normal sized Toyota hybrid hatchback that had served us well for years before having children. I had zero inkling how much space these things take up. With a very ordinary baby seat (not obviously bigger than any of the other 10-20 ones they had at the store) we had to move the front passenger seat so far forwards that it is basically impossible for anyone "tall" to fit in any more. I am now relectantly planning to buy a larger or SUV car simply because we can't fit anyone in the pasenger seat when we have the baby seat installed. Thought about putting it in the front passenger seat, but it would probably obscure vision.
- jakeogh 7y agoExcellent! They are generally safer. Newton's 2nd law: F1 = -F2 m1a1 = -m2a2 (1) The longer distance that big vehicles have between people and hard surfaces is a good thing; modern airbags are amazing. 1) glossing over details, because of the way materials scale, this works out (for a smaller human a) even with larger m's on both sides, because there are longer distances involved, and therefore longer crush zones, and more room between humans and hard surfeces for airbags to fill. In accidents that involve a vehicle and a immovable object, this also works out better. Small vehicles are inherently unsafe, and should come with a disclamer tutorial on basic dynamics.
- seszett 7y ago> Small vehicles are inherently unsafe, and are primarly marketed to people who dont know basic dynamics. Or to people who need to park their car in a city. Or who rarely have to drive over 50 km/h. Or who can't afford a larger car. There really are a lot of reasons for having a smaller car, it's quite ingenuous to chalk it up to "not knowing basic dynamics".
- jakeogh 7y agoStaying alive is more important. Larger cars are not significantly more expensive; people get to choose, some ride motorcycles, it's their choice, but we shouldnt gloss over the 2nd law. Unfortunatly F=ma is not common knowledge. Pointing that out shouldn't be offensive. When one learns that simple rule, they apply it. You quoted when I was still editing, first versions are always worse:)
- wcoenen 7y agoI think the more relevant equation is a=𝚫v²/(2d) which gives you the acceleration needed to realize a speed change 𝚫v over a distance d. Larger cars allow for a larger d, therefore a smaller peak acceleration in crashes. edit: I just realized you were focusing on mass. While a higher mass is safer for you, it comes at the cost of making things less safe for everyone else. Making cars larger while keeping mass the same doesn't come with this trade-off, it reduces peak acceleration for everyone.