#beekman

The Beekman Residence, 115 Nassau St, New York, NY 10038, USA.

Based on this seat belt conversation with @lawsontl, I got a sotto voce ask in the tags from @idontneedasymbol : “no car seat for baby Sammy?” 

To which I cried “Research!” Here is the result:

> The first child seats started appearing in 1968 - but they weren’t restraints - more like ways for kids to be boosted up to see out the windshield. They even had little steering wheels.  [”Beep beep, Beekman!” “Dewey, Dewy”]*

> By 1979, Tennessee was the first state to enact a child-related seat belt law. In 1984, New York was the first state to pass a law requiring ALL passengers to wear seat belts.

> Kansas enacted its first child car restraint law in 1986. The current law provides fines ($60) for back seat passengers under 18 ONLY if the car is stopped for some other violation (or if there is an accident).

> In general, this type of restraint law shows up only after “experts” are highly recommending them, industry has made the thing widely available, and some portion of the public is already using the thing. (Case in point, all Chevy cars had seat belts standard in 1967. Seat belts as standard installation in cars was required by federal law in 68.)

> Dean was born in 1979; Sam was born in 1983.

So LEGALLY, neither boy had to have seat belts/restraints in Kansas as an infant. When Sam turned 3, it became law *in Kansas* that he and Dean had to wear a seat belt in the back - punishable by fine only if John got stopped for something else. If they were in the front, the cops could pull John over for not having them in a seat belt. But by then, they were running around in all sorts of states which may have had looser or more strict laws.

Practically, I strongly suspect Sam and Dean had some sort of car carrier/seat as an infant. If they were readily available and recommended as good parenting practice, Mary and John likely bought one for Dean and then reused it for Sam. I suspect this because it is a pain in the neck to have to hold a child the entire time you are in a car, AND because either parent driving alone would have then needed DEAN to hold the baby. And that was not likely before Mary’s death.

So YES, baby Sammy most likely had a car seat. Even after Mary’s death - as it almost certainly lived in the Impala and would not have been destroyed in the fire. Whether or not it was legally installed or even met subsequent legal requirements is far less certain.

Once Sam grew out of it, however, I bet Sam and Dean rarely ever wore their seat belts in the back seat. Because seat belts SUCK when you are an active  kid in the big back seat of a car. How can you play on the floorboards if you have to wear a seat belt? Given John’s overall parenting approach, I suspect that as long as they weren’t fighting, seat belts were not even mentioned. In fact, I bet enforced seat belts were a punishment for misbehavior. They were for my brother and I growing up...

*reference to Raising Demons by Shirley Jackson - one of my favorite “funny family autobiographical books” which contains a lot about the wife/family’s relationship to cars.

Sources:

Doug Beekman, Wall of Souls