You might be old enough to remember being a kid and riding in car untethered, free to climb from back seat to front and back again,  or perhaps enjoying the ride sitting on the car floor, or my favorite, stretching out on the back dash (well, I was small and cars were large).

Those were great times, we didn’t even know from seat belts. There was that problem with the passengers flying through the windshield and splattering on the pavement during collisions, but moms and dads were too busy smoking and trying to tune in their crappy AM car radios to be worrying-warting about car accidents back then.

Then came Ralph Nader and the whole consumer buzz-kill movement, and by the time I was a parent, free-range children were a thing of the past. I have to admit, I bought into it. I had my 5-year old so psyched about the importance of seat belts, he almost caused an accident by screeching in terror when he realized the car was in motion and I had forgotten to fasten his seat belt.

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