@JeremyMiller Totally agree on the whole 8 years/80 lbs/seatbelt bit; but the nice thing is that it's not like you carry ID for your kid around.

So if your kid fits appropriately in the seat, you're basically good to go, because no cop is going to ask for a birth certificate

(and if the cop asks the kid for his age, you can contest the ticket since they're not allowed to question kids directly like that without your permission!)

I've got two 90th percentile height/weight guys who are undoubtedly going to be out of carseats by 6 or so, and i'm fairly sure Illinois is one of those states that you're talking about

Freakonomics podcast a while back had a discussion on this (and maybe one of the books?), largely stating that car seats are not much safer if any than properly adjusted seatbelts, even for 2 or 3 year olds (excluding the benefit you get from more thoroughly restraining a wild 3 year old of course)

although, now that I look at the numbers, 80lbs is unlikely to be achieved younger than 8

so we'll see I guess in a few years!

@Ida Interestingly Illinois doesn't have a back seat law at all as far as I can tell. They may not explain it well on the DMV page, but even carseats don't have to be in the back seat as far as I can tell (which is silly).

I suspect 13 is based on passenger airbags, which for a several year period wouldn't have been safe for a sub-adult sized (sub-5 foot, basically) person

Nowadays they're safer, I believe, and fairly easy to disable if you prefer to do that; but it's still safer in the back seat, and I remember as a kid I wasn't in the front seat until 13 or so and didn't feel it was particularly unfari

(though I was the eldest child, so my siblings may've had a different opinion)

Useful: Type ? on any SE site to see a popup of available keyboard shortcuts. Did you know?!

@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun Where do you type "?"?

@Beofett not here in chat, obviously ;p

but in any question page, or the main page.

I'm on Chrome, wonder if that's the trick. No Greasemonkey scripts installed!

@TorbenGundtofte-Bruun I'm in Chrome, and I can't get it to work.

where are you putting your cursor? Or does it not matter?

@JeremyMiller as anecdotal evidence, I was stopped by the police once for speeding with a baby (bucket seat) in the car, and my husband was stopped once with all of us in the car (toddler + baby). The cops did not as much as look at the car seats and whether they were legal, kids and seats correctly installed etc. Kid + the seat looks ok seems to be good enough. I think it would matter more if you get involved with CPS or in a custody case, but who knows?