Monroe County Bans Smoking in Cars with Children

[joslar15]

Bloomington liberalism at it's finest! Glad to be a former resident. For me, I knew it was the beginning of the end when the city council started charging by the can/bag for trash collection.

 

[Chefcook]

You're right it isn't your buisness, but there is a line that can be crossed and people need to be reported for the safety of those kids.

Like the day I was delivering for Eby-Brown in Shelbyville and a van pulled up with a van load of kids. Not one of them could have been 7-8. All little kids. Not one of them in a seat belt, not one in a booster or baby seat, nothing. Just hopping around in the van like monkeys. Well, mom, or whoever she was, got out and went into the Gas America. I stood in the back of that semi for 30 minutes watching those kids fight, flip lights, honk the horn, shake the van... Oh and did I mention the van was RUNNING the whole time????????????

I was going to call the police at this point but I didn't need to. By the time I got out to the cab to get my phone the cops had already been called and pulled her over the moment she left the gas station. I was happier then as she was arrested. Most likely for child neglect and endangerment I'd hope.

It may be none of my buisness what other parents do with their kids or how they raise them, but I have my boiling point. I've dealt with CPS before and I know where THEY draw the line. Luckily my line and theirs run right together.... I do believe that CPS abuses their power and that they unjustly take kids from good parents. They really need some good trained staff that knows how to investigate and actually CARES and isn't there just for what little money they make.

First I want to say this. The person should not have left the van running, that was a poor decision. However that aside, this story reminds me of when I was young in another sense...

You are too young, you have never known life without laws like the seat belt law... When I was a little boy there were no seat belt laws. One of my fondest memories from childhood vacations and long drives to the shore, were from playing games in the car, games that under today's seat belt laws are impossible to play. Like dead dolls.. That's where you make your body go all limp sitting in the back seat with several other children, then as the car goes around corners everyone flops around jostling into each other from the centrifugal force, laughing and giggling all the while. I think it is tragic that no child will ever know those joys as I did ever again, because the government has made that childhood game illegal to save us from ourselves. MMMMM funny... How I survived as long as I have without the government to save me from my own foolishness. It sounds to me like you have been conditioned enough that if you saw a car full of laughing giggling children playing "like children" enjoying life you would be angered and disgusted to the point of dialing 911.

Now that thought is enough to make me throw up a little. This is a perfect example of what Jack said in his earlier post about the mule.

My faith and my own personal belief is this. When it is your time it is your time and rather you are wearing a seat belt or in a rubber room wearing a suit of armor, is not going to make any difference. When God calls you to his service you go, as in when its your time to die you die, and there is no amount of shelter or protection that is going to keep you from it.

People are always trying to control everything especially other people. When you wake up and realize that you have no control especially over other people, you will live a happier less stressed life.

The only real freedom anyone of us truly has is the ability to make choices, good or bad so be it. Stop trying to take that freedom away from other people, because you cant. And honestly it isn't any of your business to attempt to do so anyway...

 

[antsi]

You are too young, you have never known life without laws like the seat belt law... When I was a little boy there were no seat belt laws. One of my fondest memories from childhood vacations and long drives to the shore, were from playing games in the car, games that under today's seat belt laws are impossible to play.

I remember being a very little kid and sleeping on the rear deck of my parents' car, looking up through the rear window at the stars.

As a teenager, I was just about always driving a pickup truck around with the bed full of kids. At highway speeds, frequently on I-65 and I-465.

When God calls you to his service you go, as in when its your time to die you die, and there is no amount of shelter or protection that is going to keep you from it.

Yes, but in Matthew we are reminded not to tempt Him. He may have a plan for when we go and may take us then. But I do believe we can speed up the process considerably through our own stupidity.

 

[SavageEagle]

OH I remember days that seat belt laws were non-existant aswell. At least in So. IN they were. My parents made me wear mine but I could always unbuckle once we were out of town... Go figure that one out, right? I remember being 10-11 and we drove to Baaaaahston and Niagra Falls. I slept in the backseat 50% of the time we were driving and the other half going WOW LOOK AT THAT! all with no seat belt. I'm not that young.

It didn't upset me to see kids un-restrained in a vehicle being kids. It upset me that the kids were BEYOND being kids and being out of control and the parent did nothing let alone care. When one kid is on top of another punching each other and kicking at the driver's seat while the rest are obviously screaming to talk above the blairing radio... Yea, it was that bad.

As far as riding in the back of a truck... There's NOTHING wrong with it. It's no worse or dangerous that riding a bike. Of course some kids just don't have the brains to stay sitting or at least not sit on the ledge of the bed.... Natural Selection used to be a great population control....

 

[haldir]

I remember being a very little kid and sleeping on the rear deck of my parents' car, looking up through the rear window at the stars.

Yep that was the life. On long trips Dad would sometimes put a piece of plywood down on the seat with stuff stored in the floor area where your feet would be. We would put a bunch of blankets and pillows on the plywood then and had a great time...

He had an old two seater at one time (seems like a 46 Chevy). I had a little wooden (unfastened to anything) chair that I would sit in just behind the seats. I remember having a hell of a time trying to stay upright around curves, turns or bumps.

 

[Chefcook]

I remember being a very little kid and sleeping on the rear deck of my parents' car, looking up through the rear window at the stars.

As a teenager, I was just about always driving a pickup truck around with the bed full of kids. At highway speeds, frequently on I-65 and I-465.



Yes, but in Matthew we are reminded not to tempt Him. He may have a plan for when we go and may take us then. But I do believe we can speed up the process considerably through our own stupidity.

I do not temp him, however I will not be overly guarded against it either. The little voice in the back of my head has seen fit to warn me sufficiently when necessary keeping me from harms way.

 

[Chefcook]

Yep that was the life. On long trips Dad would sometimes put a piece of plywood down on the seat with stuff stored in the floor area where your feet would be. We would put a bunch of blankets and pillows on the plywood then and had a great time...

He had an old two seater at one time (seems like a 46 Chevy). I had a little wooden (unfastened to anything) chair that I would sit in just behind the seats. I remember having a hell of a time trying to stay upright around curves, turns or bumps.

How can it be worthwhile or honorable to rob generations of children of memory's such as this...

 

[StarKing]

OK, I'll contact the researchers on all 516 of those studies and ask them to send me their data so I can re-analyze it. I'll get back to you on that real soon

Let's get ridiculous, shall we. I didn't say you should go dig out every study ever written that you can pop up on google, nor have I done so.

It is true in medicine that we sometimes have to use observational and associational methods rather than experimental designs. This is due to the practical and ethical considerations involved with research on human subjects. Tell you what; next time I'm doing research on harmful health effects I'll call you and your family to be experimental volunteers. If you're in materials science or some other field where you can spend all day deliberately breaking things, then yes, you have the luxury of more rigorous study designs than are generally available in medicine. We don't have the option of indiscriminately harming people to make a point.

I'm not stupid, I'm fully aware that medical researchers are subject to ethical limitations that frequently make it impossible to do certain types of experimental research, and I'm vastly impressed by their ability to do as well as they do under those limitations. The fact that you have no viable alternative however, does not make weak science stronger.

I do agree with you that there are people in this debate who have already made up their minds what results they want to believe, and then go cherry-picking evidence to support what they've already concluded.

What's equally clear to me is that you are one of them.

That's good, let's move to personal attacks.
Sorry, the only cherry picking I have done is to dismiss anything funded by or otherwise connected to the tobacco industry. I'm beginning to think that was a mistake.
I was as convinced as you are a little over a year ago, and never would have questioned any of it had I not wanted to do some risk calculations, for which I needed raw data, when I started digging I did not find what I had expected. Even at that it took months for me to accept what I was seeing.

You've off-handedly dismissed 516 peer reviewed studies without even looking at them, based on flimsy excuses like some of them might have used a single tailed statistical test. I've taken graduate level statistics, too, and I know the difference between a single tailed and two tailed test. I agree that in some studies that are on the borderline of statistical significance, researchers have inappropriately used a single tailed test to make their findings look better. I agree it's not intellectually honest to do this. However, even when this is done, it doesn't reverse the direction of the association; it just alters the relative chances of a Type I vs. Type II error.

I haven't off-handedly dismissed anything. I haven't read them, much less done any checks on their data. Are you telling me that you have read all of them and personally verified that they support your position? If so, you have a helluva lot more free time than I do. I'm not going to make an assessment one way or another on something I haven't even read.
Oh, and by the way, since when has scientific validity been determined by how tall your stack of studies is?

The bottom line here, though, is that you haven't even looked at any of these studies before you dismiss all 516 of them out of hand, because you suspect that maybe some of them might have inappropriately used a single tailed test. This is not consistent with your claims to scientific rigor and unbiased objectivity.

And this statement is not consistent with anything I've actually said, only with what you've said I said.

However, I do that from an intellectually honest standpoint.

I'm not saying you're intellectually dishonest, unlike what you've said about me.
I'm just saying LOOK AT THE DATA!!!

 

[StarKing]

By the way, I'm done with this particular line of discussion, it's going nowhere and I'm getting a little irritated, and I have no wish to turn it into a personal argument.