Car seats don't improve safety

This old New York Times article recently came up in a conversation I had, but I’d forgotten the facts, so I dug it up again.

Turns out it’s written by the authors of Freakonomics, an awesome awesome book that tries to get quantitative data in support of a bunch of fun and interesting theories.

The conclusion of the article is that there’s no evidence that car seats for children over 2 are any safer than using a regular seat belt, even though they’re required by law.