Amy, I agree with you, but the cost for that kid seat isn't cheap, and it's expected value seems to be zero to so many parents because if they thought the plane was going to crash, they would probably not get on it.

So you or many of your readers are often very libertarian in view and believe the citizen should be free to make their own choices.

I don't think you'll persuade parents to buy that extra seat when they don't have to.

So are you willing to have government regulation here?

When I was a kid we used to ride in the far back seat, no seat belts, maybe not even a seat of the family station wagon. Parents did not perceive the risk, and I think it took government regulation to make that practice rare.

We flew with our 6 month old on our lap, with a seat belt around him that looped through ours. He would not have been able to sit up for the two hour trip each way even if we had bought a seat, plus it kept him settled so he slept through 90% of the flight.

One of my friends always flies with her vaby attached to her in one of those baby carriers so baby is strapped securely to her chest. I don't know if a baby would fly out of a carrier like that in a crash or not, but seems like a reasonable alternate for a younger baby if it is secure.

Well, be ready. You got car-seat laws in some states that can take your child from you for endangerment if you drive and they're not secure; it can only get more restrictive.

This is a case where if you don't understand what the truly smart move is, you'll be forced to do it at the cost of yet more regulation. I still know idiots who think that the back seat of a car doesn't get involved in a crash.

Don't they have special harnesses? I'm not sure if a normal carrier like a Bjorn or scarf thing would work, but I thought I read about a special harness somewhere.

Anyhow. Next summer when we travel for my husband's work (assuming all goes well these next few weeks) we will have a baby with us, and she will be getting her own seat. For many reasons. Safety, of course, but also comfort. I mean would you want to sit next to a mother with a squiggly baby on her lap the whole flight? Wouldn't it be even worse than sitting next to a baby in a carseat? Also, I can't imagine an 8-hour flight being very comfy with a baby on my lap.

Apparently there is a stupid law though, that you are allowed to carry a baby on your lap the whole time without a restraint. If however, you do have a carseat and a separate seat, you're not allowed to hold your baby when the fasten seatbelt sign is on. Which means no nursing during take off and landing (something that could help with ear pressure and prevent a screaming kid). This makes no sense, its either ok for the baby to be on your lap, or it isn't. Why is it ok in one situation but not the other?

Every safety has a cost. All cost is paid by the private citizen. All private citizen's resources are inherently limited. Their use can be divided into needs and wants at the top, and then subcategorized according to their use within those two broad lines.

Safety of course, is a need. However we must also always ask ourselves when the cost of an additional safety measure exceeds its probable benefit.

A parent of a small child that has them daily in a car, will realize that the best carseat is a reasonable use of those limited resources because the risk (injury or death) is one taken every day or nearly. A flight however, is a very rare thing, and is quite costly. Moreover, the chance of a crash is incredibly low, further, the cost must be paid for every occasion of use. If car seats had to be bought for every trip, few people would choose to use them except for the occasional cross country drive.

So while I understand the urge to condemn a parent for being "cheap", it is really just a prudent use of limited resources. There are all kinds of safety measures and devices whose benefit is only the most minor increase in safety, it is hardly unreasonable to put this into the same category.

Every parent I know uses those plane harnesses. They cost maybe $20, as opposed to $300 or so. Keeps them from smacking the ceiling. And if the plane crashes, you're probably not going to survive, own seat or no. I've never paid for a seat for a baby under 2. And I never will.

Even if you laid that baby freely in the middle of the aisle, they're safer than driving to the grocery store in the car. Life is risk, we assess accordingly.

I'll just have to politely disagree.

Yes, it's prudent, but the extra expense would probably have kept Obaasan from ever seeing her youngest granddaughter. We didn't have the money. If you ignore the benefits and quantify the risks, you'll never do anything.

Life is unfair, and in the end, no one escapes alive. One of my classmates in elementary school died as a result of a broken neck suffered by diving into shallow water at a class picnic. My best friend didn't return alive from Vietnam. Some of my peers died in Vietnam, while I had a great time in Japan. Some guys I served with died over there in traffic accidents. Had I reacted a little less cautiously, one of them might have been me.

So, with perfect hindsight, there should be no eighth grade picnics, everyone should have evaded the draft, don't drive in Japan, don't ride motorcycles, and be lucky.

I also must strongly disagree with Amy here.

First, essentially all airlines have special seatbelts for attaching lap-held children to their parents' seatbelts. The examples in the article are 20 years old - really timely and relevant. I have never seen a child on a lap without one of these belts.

Second, let's be real: how many people die in airplane crashes? How many children? The numbers are so tiny that - realistically - no further measures of any kind are justifiable.

There are far more important things to worry about.

Disagree too (and I don't have kids). What in the world is an extra seat going to do for a baby? The safety restraints are clearly designed for people who can sit upright on their own and are of the proper size. And you think it's because parents are cheap? Nonsense.

Those aren't fair analogies, Amy. If you gave your cancer-striken kid broccoli enemas as a cure, or jumped off a building with him, the odds of death are pretty close to 100%. The odds of a kid dying by flying into a window during turbulence are very small, especially if they are strapped to an adult, but even if they are not. I'm going to defer to parental decisions here.

There's a great scene in the movie "Fearless" where Jeff Bridges demonstrates to Rosie Perez how hard it is to hold onto your baby by driving a car into a wall.

I think a harness is a great solution -- not some sling, but the kid can't go flying out of. Momof4 has mentioned this before, but as for everybody you know using them -- I'm sure that's true, but I have never seen ANYBODY on a plane use one.

Responsible sensible (and before it was cool libertarian :-)) parents care about their kids safety. Long before the gov't began to regulate the car seat industry and you could buy them in stores, my father built a car seat for me that strapped into the back of the family car. It looked somelike like a small blue vinyl recliner with bumpers on the side and shoulder strap belts to keep me in. It didn't take big daddy gov't to make my Dad concerned enough to protect me as best he could.

I flew with my daughter when she was 8 months old (we were going to NYC to see a doctor for her, last minute seats and no way we could pay for one for her too) and I put her in a Bjorn carrier, thinking that while true, I might squish her in a crash, she would not fly away from me. I knew I could never hold her in a crash. But when it came time for takeoff and landing, the stewardess MADE me unhook her! I did it to appease her but as soon as she sat down out of sight I hooked my daughter back up.

Have you ever seen one of those films where someone tries to hold a doll in a car crash and they go flying through the window? Why would a plan be any different.

After that, and we have flown many times, we buy another seat and also bring car seats for our children to sit in. They are safer and also used to them, plus we need them when we get to our destination.

Hope this works....

http://iowntheworld.com/blog/?p=36463

Amy, you realize by taking this attitude, you've placed yourself
squarely into the camp that is scandalized by a parent allowing
their child to take public transit by themselves? Free-range kids
are in too much danger!

Let's look at the figures. NHTSA announced that 2009 was a record
low fatality year. The death rate for auto transport was only 1.16
fatalities per 100 million Vehicle Miles Traveled.

Meanwhile, the same year (per NTSB figures) had .03 fatalities per
100 million Vehicle Miles Traveled for scheduled aircraft flight.

That means that chance of death in auto was 38 times more likely
than in aircraft. So, you've made a more effective choice if you
spend anwhere up to 38 times more to make your car safer than in
making your airplane ride safer. Let's put a dollar figure on it.
Suppose it costs $300 to get a baby seat on your flight. The
statistics say that you're making a better choice to spend as much
as $11,000 to make your car safer. By spending your money on the
more likely problem, rather than on the unlikely but spectacular
one, you're getting more actual safety per dollar spent.

We live on the east coast and both of our families are on the west coast, so we've flown cross country with kids at least twice a year for the past 9 years. And the kids have ALWAYS had their own seats, where they've sat in their car seats, strapped in.

However, I will defend the parents a bit...

Not all car seats are FAA approved. All car seats sold in the US are approved by the DOT, but several are NOT approved for use on airlines. We made sure before purchasing our car seats that they were FAA approved. We also have had more than one stewardess make us prove that the seat was, indeed, FAA approved (there's usually a lable on the seat on the bottom that says this). Many of the "bucket" style baby seats aren't approved, mainly because the bases are too big to fit in a standard airline seat.

And yes, these are issues you should consider before you have baby, as we did. But sometimes stuff comes up. I was on a flight for business four years ago with a young mother and her 4 month old baby. Her dad and died suddenly and she had to fly home with no notice. Yes, she should put her baby's safety first. But sometimes we all just do what we can to get from A to B.

If we really want to change this situation, the airlines should require all kids to be in FAA approved car seats, in their own seats. Quite obviously, until this is the law, people will continue to hold babies on planes.

rather than frame this as an either/or thing, let's think for a moment... It would be prudent to require that a child be restrained in a plane, when everyone else is, but that DOESN'T require their own seat. If they have the supplemental belt for a parent lap sit, that's fine. Beyond that, you have the requirement that when the kid IS X age, they must have their own seat. IIRC they can't lap sit after 2yrs. so that's when it is.

This takes care of the requirements without making them difficult to meet. Planes are much safer than cars in the main, and failures are also quite catastrophic, so there SHOULD be differences between child restraint in planes and cars. In cars there are many more accidents, but they are often minor, so the system should be different.

What's next, all busses need seatbelts? I think it's an over-reaction.

Sorry ;-) but you are wrong on this.
If child safety was the first concern, then avoiding car trips would be on the top of the list.
Adding $300 to the price of a plane ticket will push those parents to drive... a much riskier method of travel.

"If you don't have the money to fly your children safely to your destination -- don't go, or don't have children. You don't get to endanger your child's life because you're a cheap fuck who figures you'll gamble that your flight won't be one of the few that babies go flying on."

Cheap fuck? Maybe you had a bad day, but that's way over the line. You complain about rudeness, you even make it your career, but that's inexcusable.

We've travelled overseas with infants in beds that attach to the bulkhead. Are you saying we should have bought a seat to fit an infant? A seat designed for adults?

When we fly with our children, I always insist that they keep their seat belts attached at all times.

Do you wear a bulletproof jacket when walking outside in L.A.? Over 30,000 people died in the USA by guns in 1996.

I don't think Amy needs a bulletproof vest in the LA neighbourhoods she hangs in. I'm a socal resident too though, and I do have a taser handy in case my car breaks down in a not so good place...I'm a proactive kinda gal. :-)

Amy, love your site and I agree with you the majority of the time, but I have to agree with EarlW on this one. I am all about safety, but as a society I think that too often we think of the worst-case-scenario first, without regard to how likely that situation is to play out.

My children are older now, but as infants we always held them in our laps. It helped them feel more secure and kept them quiet for the whole plane ride, making it a better experience for my husband and I- not to mention all of the other people on the plane.

**Oh, please. How many infants do you see sitting alone on buses?

About as many as I see flying alone on airplanes.

(no seat belts on buses either.)

(just sayin'...)

Do any of you have any statistics on how many infants are killed or seriously injured each year in commercial aircraft because they were in their parent's arms instead of a separate car seat?
Do you know how many children are killed or seriously injured because they were riding in a small car instead of a Hummer?
Then aren't all parents that drive small cars "a cheap fuck" because they took this risk? Cost/ benefit needs to be calculated at all times to avoid eliminating a small expensive risk while ignoring a larger cheaper risk.
I'm sure that teasing out the statistics would be hard but no one can doubt that the risk avoided driving the Hummer (or other very large vehicle)verses the small car is vastly higher per dollar spent than buying an extra plane ticket.

So how about this?

We used to have smoking and nonsmoking sections of the plane. How about family and non family sections? The FAA could design seats that were geared to kids, and therefore safer for them (i.e., rear facing, 5 point harness).

And, as a BONUS, now all the kids are in one section of the plane. Which I know we've dicussed before. No more toddler next to you, unless you're Mom. Thank you, Jesus.

I joke. But only kinda.

If the airlines made safety their primary issue, not only would all the seats face backwards and be constructed like those on the space shuttle but the plane would never take off according to a schedule. It would be, "this plane leaves when it is safe to do so" and the weather looks favorable for the entire route which is exactly how the military runs their planes in anything other than a combat or emergency situation. I agree with the others on this board. If the airlines had to do the things that raised their 99.9999995 safety rating to 99.9999996 it would drive the price of a ticket through the roof and the inconvenience of getting on a plane would be such a hassle that they would be out of business and the alternative for all but the super rich would, be driving, trains or ships which are far less safe and/ or more time consuming. The fact that there have been a few babies and toddlers killed in plane crashes that MIGHT have survived had they been buckled in a seat is akin to saying that you are an irresponsible parent for ever leaving your child with a sitter based on the number of kids that have choked to death under the care of a sitter or relative.

"Over 30,000 people died in the USA by guns in 1996. "

Piffle- guns have nuthin' on the medical establishment.

* 106,000 patients die each year from the negative effects of medication
* 80,000 patients die each year due to complications from infections incurred in hospitals
* 20,000 deaths per year occur from other hospital errors
* 12,000 people die every year as a result of unnecessary surgery
* 7,000 medical malpractice deaths per year are attributed to medication errors in hospitals

There....that ought to muddy the waters a little bit more.

"And if the plane crashes, you're probably not going to survive, own seat or no."

Sorry - this is NOT true. It'll take you some time, but look at the Jet Airliner Crash Data Evaluation Center website.

And Earl? After you use a 14-year-old number, do try to subtract the gangbangers. It's not like they wouldn't kill each other or the bystanders with something else - as Britain has discovered, in the process exposing their keen lack of sanity about crime.

Radwaste: I agree that the gun death figure is outdated and perhaps over the top. Suicides are a large percentage.

My point was that there are many decisions we make concerning our safety. Driving a small/cheaper car could have been a better choice. I should have looked up the safety stats on 1960 Ramblers ;-)

Newer cars are much safer than the older models.

If Amy wants to drive a friend and their child around town in a 1960 Nash Rambler, can I call her a "cheap fuck" too?

Amy, I've been a reader longer than I have been a father. I first wanted to let you know that someone is listening. When my child was 0-2 he got his own seat on the plane, in part because of you harping on this topic. But also because the domestic lines we fly are universally 3 seats on each side of the aisle. We have a three person family, makes sense to rent the whole row.

But I also wanted to let you know that bringing the car seat on-board conflicts with some of your other views on air travel. If you mount the seat rear-facing for real young ones then the seat in front cannot fully recline. If you mount it forward facing to eliminate this problem then it elevates the child's body so that the feet are now suspended right at the narrowest point between the seat and the seatback in front of it. It may be hard to picture but imagine a child's feet, suspended in the air, not resting on the ground like yours, and about 2 inches between the feet and the tray table. Super Nanny wouldn't be able to stop the kid from kicking the seat.

And don't get me started on the ridiculous circus of boarding/de-boarding while trying to hold a car seat that is wider than the aisle in one arm, a carry-on over your shoulder and an infant in the other arm. Very hard to keep the look together.

But the biggest reason to rent the extra seat, in my opinion, is that a kid on your lap screws up your ability to put the tray table down and enjoy your bloody mary.

Riding your bike with a dog stuck on the front of you? What possesses a person to do that? Does the dog have a helmet? Do you? Do you ride in long pants and long sleeves to prevent road rash if you go down? Should the government keep statistics about dog injuries while being transported on a bike? Are these silly questions?

The very first post by Jerry answers the question quite well. If nothing else, consider the parent who makes a (dumb?) choice to hold their child but the child dies anyway. In 5,000 to 10,000 years we would not have anyone making the slightly riskier choice, those risk genes would have been erased. Dan Derrick

Aside from the safety of the baby, there is also the safety of the other passengers to think of. An unsecured 20 pound baby turns into a 20 pound projectile during a crash landing and could seriously injure or possibly kill someone if it strikes them in the head, particularly another child. So no, it isn't just about a parent's personal choice. Unlike a car, you're sharing this plane with hundreds of other people and you don't have the right to endanger them because you're too cheap to buy a seat or one of those special security slings (which I think are pretty cool looking, btw).

"Aside from the safety of the baby, there is also the safety of the other passengers to think of. An unsecured 20 pound baby turns into a 20 pound projectile during a crash landing and could seriously injure or possibly kill someone if it strikes them in the head, particularly another child. So no, it isn't just about a parent's personal choice. Unlike a car, you're sharing this plane with hundreds of other people and you don't have the right to endanger them because you're too cheap to buy a seat or one of those special security slings (which I think are pretty cool looking, btw)."
I don't know about you but in the event of a crash I am a lot more worried about those 50 pound carry on bags stored in those overhead bins with the flimsy latches that seem to pop open occasionally even during a smooth ride. I know a guy who was on the plane during the Sioux City crash and he said there was luggage flying everywhere.

I was sitting on a bench at the school playground today after dismissal wile the kids burnt off some steam, under the shade of a big pecan (which shade would be the ONLY way to be outside in austin right now. Or, heck, half the year) and a dead branch dislodged by the wind fell on me. What, would you assume, are the odds of that? A big branch,mind you, I'm bruised. I personally know I beat the odds in ANY given situation, but short of that, judging risk is a rather personal decision. I've driven the kids home from the park sans fastened carseat, and I'm the mom who almost NEVER leaves her kid with a sitter. But 2 blocks? Yeah, I risk it. In part, because (from reading this blog, in part) I realize how very rare some of the things parents obsess over are. And this, by FAR, falls in that category. I repeat-your kid is far more likely to die going to HEB. What I do isn't the only thing a loving parent could do, in this situation.

Greg Abbot (AG for TX and my brother's former boss) was paralyzed by a falling branch. Go figure.

"I don't know about you but in the event of a crash I am a lot more worried about those 50 pound carry on bags stored in those overhead bins with the flimsy latches that seem to pop open occasionally even during a smooth ride."

This, of course, is an attempt at a "two wrongs" fallacy. The existence of unsecure luggage does not excuse you from securing an infant or toddler from becoming a projectile.

"I don't know about you but in the event of a crash I am a lot more worried about those 50 pound carry on bags stored in those overhead bins with the flimsy latches that seem to pop open occasionally even during a smooth ride."

"IThis, of course, is an attempt at a "two wrongs" fallacy. The existence of unsecure luggage does not excuse you from securing an infant or toddler from becoming a projectile."

Rad, it is clear that you understand neither the two wrongs fallacy nor comparative risk. This is a comparative risk analysis. I never said there was anything wrong with securing children in a plane. In fact I am in favor of it and think it is prudent for all passengers to be seat belted in except in emergency but when you look at the comparative risk to other people of one of two unsecured babies being tossed around the cabin compared to a hundred pieces of carry on luggage (and the drink and food carts) the risk to other passengers is negligible. Restraining a few infants does nothing to reduce the danger of things flying around the cabin. As my husband the engineer pointed out, the amount of stuff flying around in a plane during a crash is the equivalent of someone firing a shotgun in a confined space. You are focusing on the perceived collateral damage from one or two particular pellets, not the overall risk, which is unmitigated by infant restraint. For those who don't understand degrees of risk and the math behind it I suggest the book Innumeracy by John Allan Paulos. If you have enough math background to understand it, it will teach you a lot about probabilities. http://www.amazon.com/Innumeracy-Mathematical-Illiteracy-Its-Consequences/dp/0809058405/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1285338045&sr=1-1

I'm admittedly behind the times. My son is driving now and it was been a long time since I flew with him.

At the time, the airlines would not permit me to use any car seat except the rear facing infant seats (for new babies). Forward facing and toddler seats were not.

He was of the age that a crash while wearing an adult style belt would have likely killed him, too.

Times change.

Amy, your scoffing at Ron almost makes me want to stop reading your work; he makes an entirely valid point. The point of free range kids is that there are very small chances of very bad things happening to kids by giving them lots of freedom, but the benefits of freedom are worth it. In this case, there is a minuscule chance of an infant death without an airplane seat (you've listed 1-2 instances out of well over 10 billion domestic passenger enplanements in the past 20 years) and a $300 benefit. Do you honestly believe it is a moral imperative for parents to insure against risks to their infants up to at least a cost of at least $1.5 million per 1-in-a-million chance of death?

You're missing the point; say a harness costs $20. The parent is now paying $100k per 1-in-a-million chance for airplane-crash-death insurance. Do you honestly believe there is a moral imperative for this level of insurance spending?

Safety issues aside, for the person sitting next to the mother and baby, it must be uncomfortable. Especially one who isn't a newborn, I have a hard time imagining even a very skinny mother, holding, say, a nine-month baby, being able to keep her arms inside her armseats. I can see accidently elbowing a person very easily.

I mean, hell, a wife might be perfectly comfortable sitting on her husband's lap if they're both thin and fit in the seat... why not allow that, too?

Also, if parents don't have the right to put other passengers at risk in an airplane, do they have a right to drive an SUV (which puts more people at much greater risk)?

Your insensitivity to people's differing preferences is well noted. Now, are you arguing that infants should have separate seats on plants primarily because of the danger to the infant or primarily because of the danger to other passengers?

So you're saying a child shouldn't be exposed to a 1-in-5-billion risk of death because parents decided not to pay $20 in insurance? Moreover, people shouldn't have the right to expose anyone else to a 1-in-10-billion risk of injury or death in order to save $20 themselves?

On the first count, if parents should be willing to pay $20 for insurance against a 1-in-5-billion risk, they should be willing to pay the same amount to insure against that same risk again; if they fly on another flight, they should also pay the $20 then. So, they're paying $40 to insure against a 2-in-5-billion chance (2 flights). Same logic for 10, 20 or 100 flights. For a 1-in-300-million risk, parents should be willing to pay $333 by this logic. So, whenever they turn on the TV and see that some ridiculously improbable thing happens to any infant anywhere in America, they should go out immediately and spend $300 to address that risk according to your statement. And if they can't afford to, they should stay home in their living room.

On the second count, consider that mechanical failures account for something like 10% of accidents. With about 44,000 auto fatalities each year, that's 4400 fatalities caused by some of 250 million cars each year for a 1-in-60,000 chance of a particular car causing a death due to mechanical failure. If people are morally obligated to pay $20 to avoid a 1-in-10-billion chance of injuring or killing someone, then people with older cars at risk of mechanical failure should be morally obligated to pay about $3 million each year to buy a better/newer car. And if they can't afford to, they should stay home in their living room.

Which part of this logic do you disagree with, or do you just disagree with the idea of using logic in this case?

Hey, Amy, cars crash because things wear out. You don't have a right to endanger your child or others by driving an old car should you go driving, right?

I'm confused as to why you're having trouble understanding the idea that reducing risk has costs and that reducing some risks isn't worth the cost. This is the fallacy that liberals make all the time; "it doesn't matter how much universal health care costs because it's going to save lives". I'm trying to give you other examples where we accept risks that we could reduce because the cost of doing so is too high. In the case of cars, they do crash because of mechanical failures. You can disbelieve my number of 10% that I got from the Department of Transportation, but even if the right number was 0.1%, my point would still hold: because older cars are at higher risk of mechanical failures that lead to deaths, your assignment of $20 to the value of insurance against 1-in-5-billion events means that owners of old cars should be morally obligated to buy a new car every year just to reduce the very-small probability that their car would experience a mechanical failure and kill someone. Are you 99.999% sure your mechanic always does his job perfectly with respect to the possibility of catastrophic crashes? If not, you should be morally obligated to spend a lot more money than you are to reduce the small risk of a mechanical failure that leads to a fatality. (the 99.999% isn't an arbitrary or rhetorical number; that means you're sure the chance of having a mechanical failure in your car that leads to a fatality is less than 1 in 100000)

If you disagree with my characterization that you don't understand that some risks aren't worth the costs, then prove me wrong by answering this question: how much could an infant-securing mechanism cost before you would stop believing it was a moral imperative for parents to use them on planes?

Your response indicates that you do not understand what I am saying or asking. I asked what the maximum cost *could be* for you to still say that the use of an infant-securing mechanism is a moral imperative, not whether the actual cost would be that high. For instance, if hypothetically the only way to adequately secure an infant cost $100k, I doubt you would think it was a moral obligation for parents to spend that money if they wanted to fly with their infant. Your original article indicates that you believe this number to at least be larger than $300.

On an entirely different note, if harness are indeed as cheap and effective as you seem to think, why do you think airlines do not have them as standard safety equipment?

Again, your argument seems to be that infant restraints on airplanes are a moral imperative because they are an inexpensive way to reduce negative externalities. My point is that the risk is so small that even a small cost for the restraints makes the effective cost of insurance too high in this case to be consistent with our other behaviors where we aren't at all willing to pay proportionally more to reduce a proportionally greater risk. I am sorry to see your refusal to acknowledge that reducing some risks is not worth the cost or defend why the cost of the risk exceeds the cost of the insurance in this case; this is typical of closed-minded liberals, so it is particularly sad to see you succumb.

As for parents paying the price, sure, I agree with you in principle. However, would it be better practically to charge every passenger a tiny fraction of a penny extra (20 year plane service life, 10 infant restraints per plane @ $40 each, 1 flight per plane per day, maybe 100 passengers per plane) to provide the restraints, or require parents to buy another $40 thing to manage their kids? If you really want everyone to pay for all the negative externalities they impose on others, how about you start by paying the person your employee put a SUV flyer on that didn't have a big SUV?

In any case, this is my last comment and last post of yours I'll read. I hope your refusal to think about things in logical numerical terms serves you well.

Isabel,

You're right, but how many will hang on for your explanation? If you try to excuse one behavior by citing another, that is clearly a "two wrongs" condition.

Although this example is of direct behavior, not a failure to act, the principle is easier to show the layman than the need to isolate cost/benefit analyses. I know about the comparison business. People try to compare traffic deaths with combat deaths all the time to justify what they want - or - heh - the "success" of alcohol or tobacco industries to promote drug legalization. Bzzz! Fail!

I'm confused by Ben's stupidity

Why would an airline need to stock child harneses on every plane and rent them out when parents could purchase one of their own for less money and be able to keep it?

Here's the thing: I'll respect your right to a lap baby if you don't sue the airline when he flies off your lap and gets hurt.

Your choice, your consequences. If your child wasn't worth the few hundred bucks for his own seat, then he's certainly not worth the millions you're going to try and get out of the airline.