I have a newer car with steel locking clasps above and below the seats that keep C's car seat secured very, very well-- it doesn't flop around or move at all, for that matter.

My mom has the fold-down built-in seats in her car like the one he mentions.... those do seem the best, and they seem to lock Little C into the seat much more securely.

Have you read Freakonomics?

I have three kids, all used car seats and boosters. There are more benefits to a car seat than Levitt claims. Levitt admits that car seats may be better in preventing non-fatal injuries. He also compares against a base line of an unbelted child. With a carseat, when I have belted my kid in, he stays in the car seat, he is securly strapped in place. With an adult seat he can slip out of it easily or fall asleep and slide under it and thus become an unbelted child - much worse off. And kids in cars are typically in one of two states: bored, fighting with their brother and trying to get our of a seat belt, or asleep.

I have used the built-in type as Levitt describes in a Ford Galaxy and it is great, mostly because the seat can be used for a child or adult without the faff of installibg a seat, plus the cushon rises so that the child can see out whcih helps with car sickness. Alos it does away with the skill needed to install a regular child seat.

I wonder how many of the child seat fatalities in Levitt's data would have been avoided if seats were fitted correctly, if this is high, then the new standard of ISOFIX seats will help a lot. In UK studies installation by parents of child seats has been shown to be very poor.

If it wasn't for car safety legislation there'd be no seat belts at all, no anti-lock brakes or radial tyres and deaths would be higher. Each development in car safety, prodded along by laws, leads to further improvement along the evolution of saftey devices in cars.

Can't trust the bastards.