Once upon a time, there was a dread disease that afflicted children. And in fact, among all the diseases that existed in this land, it was the worst. It killed the most children. And along came a brilliant inventor, a scientist, who came up with a partial cure for that disease. And it wasn't perfect. Many children still died, but it was certainly better than what they had before. And one of the good things about this cure was that it was free, virtually free, and was very easy to use. But the worst thing about it was that you couldn't use it on the youngest children, on infants, and on one-year-olds.
很久以前,一種很可怕的疾病曾經困擾著很多兒童 事實上,在目前人類所知的疾病中, 那是最惡劣的一種病。它奪去了大多數兒童的生命。 有這麼一位聰明的發明家,也是個科學家, 他研究出一種方法,能在一定程度上治愈這種疾病。 該方法並非盡善盡美。依然有很多兒童身亡。 不過,肯定比之前的情況要好得多。 這種方法最大的好處是免費, 幾乎是免費,而且使用簡單。 但這種方法的缺點是你不能 用在小孩子,比如說嬰兒或者一歲大的孩子身上。
And so, as a consequence, a few years later, another scientist -- perhaps maybe this scientist not quite as brilliant as the one who had preceded him, but building on the invention of the first one -- came up with a second cure. And the beauty of the second cure for this disease was that it could be used on infants and one-year-olds. And the problem with this cure was it was very expensive, and it was very complicated to use. And although parents tried as hard as they could to use it properly, almost all of them ended up using it wrong in the end. But what they did, of course, since it was so complicated and expensive, they only used it on the zero-year-olds and the one-year-olds. And they kept on using the existing cure that they had on the two-year-olds and up.
結果幾年以後, 另外一名科學家,這位科學家可能 沒有像他之前那位那麼聰明, 但在前輩的發明基礎上 他研究出了第二種方法。 第二種方法的優點 是你可以將其用於嬰兒和一歲大的兒童身上。 但這個方法有一個問題:那就是非常昂貴, 而且使用起來非常複雜。 雖然家長們竭盡全力依照正確的方法來使用, 但絕大數的家長最後還是不得要領。 所以他們的做法是,當然,因為這方法複雜而又昂貴, 他們僅將其用在零歲和一歲大的兒童。 而繼續使用以前的老方法來針對 兩歲和兩歲以上的兒童
And this went on for quite some time. People were happy. They had their two cures. Until a particular mother, whose child had just turned two, died of this disease. And she thought to herself, "My child just turned two, and until the child turned two, I had always used this complicated, expensive cure, you know, this treatment. And then the child turned two, and I started using the cheap and easy treatment, and I wonder" -- and she wondered, like all parents who lose children wonder -- "if there isn't something that I could have done, like keep on using that complicated, expensive cure." And she told all the other people, and she said, "How could it possibly be that something that's cheap and simple works as well as something that's complicated and expensive?" And the people thought, "You know, you're right. It probably is the wrong thing to do to switch and use the cheap and simple solution." And the government, they heard her story and the other people, and they said, "Yeah, you're right, we should make a law. We should outlaw this cheap and simple treatment and not let anybody use this on their children." And the people were happy. They were satisfied.
這種情況持續了很長一段時間。人們還算滿意。 他們有兩種方法可以用。直到有一位母親, 她的孩子在剛满兩歲的時候死於這種疾病。 她就想說:“我的孩子才剛剛兩歲, 時至今日,我一直都在使用 這個複雜昂貴的方法,這種治療方案。 而當孩子到了兩歲的時候,我就換成了 另外一個便宜簡單的療法。我想知道……(如果我沒換的話)” 她的想法跟所有那些失去孩子的父母一樣, “……是否我真的無力回天, 比如繼續使用那個這種複雜昂貴的方法。” 她奔走相告,她說, “便宜怎麼能有好貨呢?這個東西 又便宜又簡單,它的效果怎麼可能 跟那種昂貴又複雜的一樣呢? 人們就想了:“沒錯,言之有理。 改用那個便宜簡單的治療方法, 沒准就是個錯誤。” 聽聞此事,政府站了出來 說:“是啊。你們說得都對。我們應該制定一條法律。 我們應該剥奪這個便宜簡單治療方案的合法使用權, 禁止任何人將其用在他們孩子身上。" 這樣一來,皆大歡喜.
For many years this went along, and everything was fine. But then along came a lowly economist, who had children himself, and he used the expensive and complicated treatment. But he knew about the cheap and simple one. And he thought about it, and the expensive one didn't seem that great to him. So he thought, "I don't know anything about science, but I do know something about data, so maybe I should go and look at the data and see whether this expensive and complicated treatment actually works any better than the cheap and simple one." And lo and behold, when he went through the data, he found that it didn't look like the expensive, complicated solution was any better than the cheap one, at least for the children who were two and older -- the cheap one still didn't work on the kids who were younger.
許多年過去了,諸事順利。 然後有一位行事低調的經濟學家出現了。他自己本身有孩子, 他用的是那個昂貴複雜的方法。 但是他同時也了解那個便宜簡單的方法。 他覺得那個貴的方法 對他來說好像不那麼完美。於是他就想: “我對科學一窍不通,但是我對研究數據很在行, 也許我應該搜集一些數據 來研究一下究竟那個昂貴複雜的療法, 是不是真的比那個便宜簡單的好。” 嘿,真想不到,當他翻閱了所有數據之後 發現那個昂貴複雜的 方法並非真的就比便宜的那個有效。 最起碼對於那些兩歲和兩歲以上的孩子來說是這樣的。 那個便宜的方法還是不適用於更小的兒童(所以無法比較)。
And so, he went forth to the people and he said, "I've made this wonderful finding: it looks as if we could just use the cheap and simple solution, and by doing so we could save ourselves 300 million dollars a year, and we could spend that on our children in other ways." And the parents were very unhappy, and they said, "This is a terrible thing, because how can the cheap and easy thing be as good as the hard thing?" And the government was very upset. And in particular, the people who made this expensive solution were very upset because they thought, "How can we hope to compete with something that's essentially free? We would lose all of our market." And people were very angry, and they called him horrible names. And he decided that maybe he should leave the country for a few days, and seek out some more intelligent, open-minded people in a place called Oxford, and come and try and tell the story at that place.
於是他就跑去告訴人們。他說, “我有一個驚人的發現, 看起來,如果我們只使用那個便宜簡單的療法, 每年可以節省三億美元。 我們可以用這筆錢為孩子做其它的事情。” 結果家長們很不高興,他們說, “這簡直是危言聳聽。一個便宜簡單的東西怎麼可能 跟一個複雜的東西媲美呢?" 政府知道之後也很不爽, 特別是那些利用這個昂貴方法賺錢的人們 就更不爽了。因為他們的想法是: “我們怎麼可能有希望跟那些幾乎免費的東西競爭呢? 我們將會失去全部的市場份額。” 人們很憤怒,把他罵了一個狗血噴頭。 無奈,他決定離開這個國家 一段時間,去到一個地方找尋其他更有智慧, 思想更開明的人。這個地方叫做牛津。 他去到那裏,試圖把這件事情講給人們聽。
And so, anyway, here I am. It's not a fairy tale. It's a true story about the United States today, and the disease I'm referring to is actually motor vehicle accidents for children. And the free cure is adult seatbelts, and the expensive cure -- the 300-million-dollar-a-year cure -- is child car seats. And what I'd like to talk to you about today is some of the evidence why I believe this to be true: that for children two years old and up, there really is no real benefit -- proven benefit -- of car seats, in spite of the incredible energy that has been devoted toward expanding the laws and making it socially unacceptable to put your children into seatbelts. And then talk about why -- what is it that makes that true? And then, finally talk a little bit about a third way, about another technology, which is probably better than anything we have, but which -- there hasn't been any enthusiasm for adoption precisely because people are so enamored with the current car seat solution. OK.
所以,總而言之。我的意思是,這並非一個童話。 這是發生在當今美國的真事。 而我所提到的疾病實際上是 車禍,跟兒童相關的車祸。 這個免費的療法就是成年人使用的安全帶,而那個昂貴的療法, 那個三億美元一年的療法,則是兒童汽車座椅。 今天我想跟你分享的是 一些證明我觀點正確的事實證據: 那就是對於兩歲和兩歲以上的兒童來說, 汽車座椅真的不起作用,我指的是沒有證據可以證明其有用。 盡管大量的精力 都投入到了積極推廣汽車座椅安全的法規中, 從而使讓儿童只使用安全帶 變成不被社會認可的行為。讓我們談一下為什麼, 是什麼讓這一觀點變為既成事實? 最後,我們要談一下第三種(保護儿童)方法, 另外一種可能比目前任何方法都先進的科技, 但人們還沒有多大兴趣采用, 準確地講,因為人們過於傾心於 兒童汽車座椅這個方案。好的。
So, many times when you try to do research on data, it records complicated stories -- it's hard to find in the data. It doesn't turn out to be the case when you look at seatbelts versus car seats. So the United States keeps a data set of every fatal accident that's happened since 1975. So in every car crash in which at least one person dies, they have information on all of the people. So if you look at that data -- it's right up on the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration's website -- you can just look at the raw data, and begin to get a sense of the limited amount of evidence that's in favor of car seats for children aged two and up. So, here is the data. Here I have, among two- to six-year-olds -- anyone above six, basically no one uses car seats, so you can't compare -- 29.3 percent of the children who are unrestrained in a crash in which at least one person dies, themselves die. If you put a child in a car seat, 18.2 percent of the children die. If they're wearing a lap-and-shoulder belt, in this raw data, 19.4 percent die. And interestingly, wearing a lap-only seatbelt, 16.7 percent die. And actually, the theory tells you that the lap-only seatbelt's got to be worse than the lap-and-shoulder belt. And that just reminds you that when you deal with raw data, there are hundreds of confounding variables that may be getting in the way.
很多時候,當你試圖進行數據研究的時候, 裏面記錄了一些具有複雜背景的事件。你很難從這些數據中找到你想要的東西, 或者說其結果並非如你所願,就好象比較安全帶跟兒童汽車座椅哪個更好。 美國政府保留了一份數據。 其中包含了從1975年至今每一個致命死亡事故。 每發生一次車禍,就至少有一人死亡。 他們記錄了所有這些車祸當事人的信息。 所以你可以瀏鑒一下這些數據。這些數據發布在全美高速公路 交通安全局的網頁上。 通過這些原始數據, 你可以發現支持兩歲和兩歲以上兒童使用汽車座椅 的證據非常有限。 這是我手裏的數據。這裏顯示兩歲到六歲, 基本來說六歲以上的兒童就不需要使用汽車座椅了。 因此,你可以比較一下。 在每次車禍必死一人的情況下, 沒有使用保護措施的孩子的死亡率為29.3%。 如果你把孩子放進汽車座椅中,其死亡率是18.2%。 如果他們系了腰及肩的安全帶,根據這個原始數據, 死亡率是19.4%. 有意思的是,如果只系腰部安全帶, 死亡機率是16.7%。事實上,原則上來說, 這種只護腰部的安全帶的效果比 腰及肩的安全更糟。而且我還要提醒你的是, 當你在研究原始數據時,這裏有成百上千 的變量因素混淆其中,從而影響到最終結果。
So what we do in the study is -- and this is just presenting the same information, but turned into a figure to make it easier. So the yellow bar represents car seats, the orange bar lap-and-shoulder, and the red bar lap-only seatbelts. And this is all relative to unrestrained -- the bigger the bar, the better. Okay. So, this is the data I just showed, OK? So the highest bar is what you're striving to beat. So you can control for the basic things, like how hard the crash was, what seat the child was sitting in, etc., the age of the child. And that's that middle set of bars. And so, you can see that the lap-only seatbelts start to look worse once you do that. And then finally, the last set of bars, which are really controlling for everything you could possibly imagine about the crash, 50, 75, 100 different characteristics of the crash.
所以我們換一種方式來看待這個問題,這裏使用的是 相同的數據,但變成了圖表後看起來簡單明了。 黃色條塊代表了汽車座椅(兒童的死亡率), 桔色條塊代表了腰及肩的安全帶(兒童的死亡率),而紅色條塊則代表了僅護腰的安全帶(兒童的死亡率)。 這些條塊已經跟無保護措施(兒童的死亡率)的情況作過比較了。 色塊越大越好。好的。 左邊是我剛剛展示過的數據,對吧? 最高的那個色塊就是人們死活不願意認同的。 你可以考慮到該研究中最基本的因素,比如車禍的嚴重性有多大, 孩子坐在哪個位置上,等等 。還有孩子的年齡。 那結論就是中間那一組色塊。 你可以發現僅護腰的安全帶, 開始看起來不安全了。 最終,最右邊這組色塊, 是在考慮到所有可能性之後而得出的結論。 你可以想像任何一種車禍。 五十種,七十五種,一百種不同性質的車祸。
And what you find is that the car seats and the lap-and-shoulder belts, when it comes to saving lives, fatalities look exactly identical. And the standard error bands are relatively small around these estimates as well. And it's not just overall. It's very robust to anything you want to look at. One thing that's interesting: if you look at frontal-impact crashes -- when the car crashes, the front hits into something -- indeed, what you see is that the car seats look a little bit better. And I think this isn't just chance. In order to have the car seat approved, you need to pass certain federal standards, all of which involve slamming your car into a direct frontal crash. But when you look at other types of crashes, like rear-impact crashes, indeed, the car seats don't perform as well. And I think that's because they've been optimized to pass, as we always expect people to do, to optimize relative to bright-line rules about how affected the car will be.
你會發現,使用汽車座椅和腰及肩安全帶, 在救命方面而言,其死亡率看起來毫無二致。 而且有關這些估算值的標準誤差範圍相對也比較小。 這不僅是泛泛而談,這個結論適用於 任何一種車禍。 有一件事很有趣:如果你看一下正面衝撞的車祸, 車禍發生時,車頭撞向某一處, 汽車座椅看起來確實更好一點兒。 但我認為這其中必有原由。 如果汽車座椅的生產想要通過許可, 就必須達到一定的聯邦標準, 而這些都假設你的車頭發生正面衝撞。 但是當你看看其它類型的車禍,比如追尾, 汽車座椅其實根本不起作用。 我想這是因為他們都是針對車頭正面沖撞來設計的。 就象大家經常會做的, 上有政策,下有對策, 在汽車安全這一問題上也是一樣。
And the other thing you might argue is, "Well, car seats have got a lot better over time. And so if we look at recent crashes -- the whole data set is almost 30 years' worth of data -- you won't see it in the recent crashes. The new car seats are far, far better." But indeed, in recent crashes the lap-and-shoulder seatbelts, actually, are doing even better than the car seats. They say, "Well, that's impossible, that can't be." And the line of argument, if you ask parents, is, "But car seats are so expensive and complicated, and they have this big tangle of latches, how could they possibly not work better than seatbelts because they are so expensive and complicated?" It's kind of an interesting logic, I think, that people use. And the other logic, they say, "Well, the government wouldn't have told us [to] use them if they weren't much better."
你可能會提出另外一個觀點, 汽車座椅的安全性能變得越來越好。 如果我們看看最近發生的車禍 這裏包含了幾乎過去30年的全部數據, 但你看不到有關汽車座椅的事故。新型汽車座椅的設計遠遠好於以前舊的。 但實際上,在最新的車禍數據中,腿及肩安全帶 的表現甚至比汽車座椅還要好。 人們會說,“哦,這不可能,完全不合邏輯。“ 如果你問一下這些父母,他們爭論的重點集中在 “汽車座椅那麼貴那麼複雜, 還有一大堆這樣那樣的鎖扣, 它們怎麼可能沒有安全帶好呢? 因為它們又貴又複雜!” 這是一個很有趣的邏輯, 我覺得,他們把它用在這裏。至於其它的邏輯,他們說, “哦,如果安全帶更好的話, 政府不會毫無理由地不讓我們用。”
But what's interesting is the government telling us to use them is not actually based on very much. It really is based on some impassioned pleas of parents whose children died after they turned two, which has led to the passage of all these laws -- not very much on data. So you can only get so far, I think, in telling your story by using these abstract statistics. And so I had some friends over to dinner, and I was asking -- we had a cookout -- I was asking them what advice they might have for me about proving my point. They said, "Why don't you run some crash tests?" And I said, "That's a great idea." So we actually tried to commission some crash tests. And it turns out that as we called around to the independent crash test companies around the country, none of them wanted to do our crash test because they said, some explicitly, some not so explicitly, "All of our business comes from car seat manufacturers. We can't risk alienating them by testing seatbelts relative to car seats."
但有意思的是,政府鼓勵我們去使用 並不能成為真正的理論基礎。 這是基於某些父母的強烈請求, 而這些父母的孩子在剛兩歲的時候就死於車禍, 這才使得法規得以通過,而並非是以事實數據為基准而得到的結論。 到目前為止,我只能用這些抽象的統計數據 讓你了解這麼多。 當我請朋友們來家裏吃飯時,我問他們, 我們當時在露天燒烤,我想聽聽他們的建議,我要如何做才能 進一步證明我的觀點。他們說:“為什麼你不做一些撞車試驗?” 我說:“這是個很好的主意。” 於是,我們試圖委託其它機構幫我們進行測試, 結果是,我們給全國的獨立 撞車測試機構打了一圈電話, 沒有人願意接手。 因為他們說, 有的直言不諱,有的拐彎磨角, “我們的生意都來源於汽車座椅生產廠家。 我們無法冒著得罪他們的風險,來做安全帶跟汽車座椅的比較測試。”
Now, eventually, one did. Under the conditions of anonymity, they said they would be happy to do this test for us -- so anonymity, and 1,500 dollars per seat that we crashed. And so, we went to Buffalo, New York, and here is the precursor to it. These are the crash test dummies, waiting for their chance to take the center stage. And then, here's how the crash test works. Here, they don't actually crash the entire car, you know -- it's not worth ruining a whole car to do it. So they just have these bench seats, and they strap the car seat and the seatbelt onto it. So I just wanted you to look at this. And I think this gives you a good idea of why parents think car seats are so great. Look at the kid in the car seat. Does he not look content, ready to go, like he could survive anything? And then, if you look at the kid in back, it looks like he's already choking before the crash even happens. It's hard to believe, when you look at this, that that kid in back is going to do very well when you get in a crash. So this is going to be a crash where they're going to slam this thing forward into a wall at 30 miles an hour, and see what happens. OK?
後來終於有一家公司答應了。他們說,在透露他們身份的條件下, 他們很高興幫我們這個忙。 於是以匿名為前提,每撞毀一個座椅我們支付他們1,500美元。 我們前往紐約水牛城(去做這個測試)。 這是測試之前的情況。 這是用於測試的人體模型, 正在等著機會登場。 這裏你可以看到我們是如果進行撞車測試的。 這裏,他們並非把整輛車撞毀,你知道, 為了做測試而毀掉一整輛車是不劃算的。 所以,你必須用這些長條座椅, 然後把汽車座椅和安全帶安裝在上面。 我想讓你看一下這個景象。 我想這能給你一個理由為什麼父母們認為 汽車座椅如此之好。看看汽車座椅裏的孩子。 他看上去不是很舒服,時刻準備出發, 好象不管什麼事故發生他都會安然無恙嗎?但如果你看一下坐在後座的那個孩子, 好象車禍還沒發生,他就已經快要窒息了。 看到這裏,你很難相信 一旦車禍發生,坐在後面的那個孩子能夠完好無損。 碰撞實驗開始時, 他們會把這個裝置使勁地摔到前面的墙上, 速度是每小時30英哩。讓我們看看會發生什麼。好嗎?
So, let me show you what happens. These are three-year-old dummies, by the way. So here -- this is the car seat. Now watch two things: watch how the head goes forward, and basically hits the knees -- and this is in the car seat -- and watch how the car seat flies around, in the rebound, up in the air. The car seat's moving all over the place. Bear in mind there are two things about this. This is a car seat that was installed by someone who has installed 1,000 car seats, who knew exactly how to do it. And also it turned out these bench seats are the very best way to install car seats. Having a flat back makes it much easier to install them. And so this is a test that's very much rigged in favor of the car seat, OK? So, that kid in this crash fared very well.
請允許我展示給你。 對了,這些是模仿3歲兒童的人體模型。 這裏是汽車座椅(和坐在裏面的孩子)。現在請注意兩件事情。 注意模型的頭向前猛沖, 基本上撞到自己的膝蓋,這是坐在汽車座椅裏的孩子的情況。 再者,注意觀察汽車座椅空中反彈後, 飛來飛去。 請記住,這裏面有兩個因素。 安裝這個汽車座椅的人 之前已經安裝過上千個了,他準確地知道如何去做。 而且,結果顯示,這些長條座椅 是最適合安裝汽車座椅的。 這個椅子的靠背是平的,所以安裝起來簡單很多。 這是一個對汽車座椅很有利的測試裝置。 是吧?那個(坐在汽車座椅中的)孩子在這次沖撞中的境遇不錯。
The federal standards are that you have to score below a 1,000 to be an approved car seat on this crash, in some metric of units which are not important. And this crash would have been about a 450. So this car seat was actually an above-average car seat from Consumer Reports, and did quite well. So the next one. Now, this is the kid, same crash, who is in the seatbelt. He hardly moves at all, actually, relative to the other child. The funny thing is, the cam work is terrible because they've only set it up to do the car seats, and so, they actually don't even have a way to move the camera so you can see the kid that's on the rebound. Anyway, it turns out that those two crashes, that actually the three-year-old did slightly worse. So, he gets about a 500 out of -- you know, on this range -- relative to a 400 and something. But still, if you just took that data from that crash to the federal government, and said, "I have invented a new car seat. I would like you to approve it for selling," then they would say, "This is a fantastic new car seat, it works great. It only got a 500, it could have gotten as high up as a 1,000." And this seatbelt would have passed with flying colors into being approved as a car seat.
按照聯邦標準 你危險系數必須少於1,000 才能通過這類撞車測驗, 這裏就不細說危險系數怎麼計算的了。 這個汽車座椅的危險系數應該在450左右。 所以,這實際上是一個高於平均水平的汽車座椅。 在消費者評價中,該座椅的性能很好。 下一個,是這個孩子,相同的測試 不同的是他使用的是安全帶。實事上,他基本上連動都沒有動, 跟剛才那個坐在汽車座椅裏的孩子比起來。有趣的是, 這個錄像很糟糕,因為它們只是被用來 做汽車座椅測試的,所以你沒辦法把攝像機 移到後面,以便看到那個孩子的反彈情況 總而言之,是在這兩次測試中,那個 三歲孩子的模型的情況稍差一點兒。所以,他的危險系數得分是500, 在這個400到1000的範圍內。 但是,如果你只是把通過撞車測試採集到的這一數據(危險系數500) 拿給聯邦政府,然後說:“我發明了一個新的汽車座椅, 我希望你能批准我銷售它。” 然後,他們就會說:“這是一個非常出色的新汽車座椅,性能很棒。” 它的危險系數只有500,只要不超過1000就行。 那麼這個安全帶毫無疑問也能通過測試 並獲得跟汽車座椅一樣的生產許可。
So, in some sense, what this is suggesting is that it's not just that people are setting up their car seats wrong, which is putting children at risk. It's just that, fundamentally, the car seats aren't doing much. So here's the crash. So these are timed at the same time, so you can see that it takes much longer with the car seat -- at rebound, it takes a lot longer -- but there's just a lot less movement for child who's in the seatbelt. So, I'll show you the six-year-old crashes as well. The six-year-old is in a car seat, and it turns out that looks terrible, but that's great. That's like a 400, OK? So that kid would do fine in the crash. Nothing about that would have been problematic to the child at all. And then here's the six-year-old in the seatbelt, and in fact, they get exactly within, you know, within one or two points of the same. So really, for the six-year-old, the car seat did absolutely nothing whatsoever.
所以在某種程度上來說,這表明了 人們不僅錯誤地安裝了汽車座椅, 讓孩子們的生命受到威脅。而是從根本上來說, 汽車座椅的作用並不大。 這是另外一個撞車測試,他們在同一時間同步進行。 你可以看到,汽車座椅恢復原位所用的時間更長, 特別是反彈之後,所有的時間更長。 但是,系安全帶的那個孩子移動的幅度小得多。 接下來,我要給你看看針對六歲大孩子的撞車測試。 使用汽車座椅的六歲孩子,其結果 看上去很恐怖,但其實不錯。這個的危險系數得分大約是400,對吧? 所以這個孩子在車禍發生時可以安然無恙。 不會有任何事情發生在他身上。 這是一個系安全帶的六歲孩子, 事實上,這兩個測驗的得分幾乎一樣, 只有一兩分的差別。說真的,對於六歲的孩子來說, 汽車座椅完全沒有一點兒作用。
That's some more evidence, so in some sense -- I was criticized by a scientist, who said, "You could never publish a study with an n of 4," meaning those four crashes. So I wrote him back and I said, "What about an n of 45,004?" Because I had the other 45,000 other real-world crashes. And I just think that it's interesting that the idea of using real-world crashes, which is very much something that economists think would be the right thing to do, is something that scientists don't actually, usually think -- they would rather use a laboratory, a very imperfect science of looking at the dummies, than actually 30 years of data of what we've seen with children and with car seats.
這裏有更多的數據,在某種程度上, 我被一位科學家批评說:“就憑著四個例子,你永遠都不可能發表 任何一個研究結果。” 意思是說我只做了四次撞車測試。 我就回信對他說:“如果我有四萬五千零四個例子呢?” 因為,我手裏有四萬五千零四例的真實車禍。 我就想,這個用實際車禍做為依據 的主意很有意思。這是那種 經濟學家們認為理所當然的事情, 而科學家們卻不會,通常他們認為, 他們更願意用實驗來說話, 就象一個用人體模型來做研究的漏洞百出科學實驗, 而不願意使用我們這三十年來所看到 跟兒童和汽車座椅相關的真實數據
And so I think the answer to this puzzle is that there's a much better solution out there, that's gotten nobody excited because everyone is so delighted with the way car seats are presumably working. And if you think from a design perspective, about going back to square one, and say, "I just want to protect kids in the back seat." I don't there's anyone in this room who'd say, "Well, the right way to start would be, let's make a great seat belt for adults. And then, let's make this really big contraption that you have to rig up to it in this daisy chain." I mean, why not start -- who's sitting in the back seat anyway except for kids? But essentially, do something like this, which I don't know exactly how much it would cost to do, but there's no reason I could see why this should be much more expensive than a regular car seat. It's just actually -- you see, this is folding up -- it's behind the seat. You've got a regular seat for adults, and then you fold it down, and the kid sits on top, and it's integrated. It seems to me that this can't be a very expensive solution, and it's got to work better than what we already have.
所以,我認為,解開迷底的答案 就是還有另外一個更好方法, 只不過沒人動心。因為每個人都 對汽車座椅所謂的性能感到很滿意。 如果你從設計的角度出發, 回到當初一片空白的階段,然後說: “我只想保護坐在後座的孩子們。” 我不認為這個房間裏諸位會說: “我們應該做的是 讓我們給成年人設計一個非常棒的安全帶。 然後,我們把這些鏈子拼湊在一起 做成一個奇形怪狀的東西。” 我的意思是說,為什麼不從這個角度考慮。如果保護那些坐在後座上的人們,除了孩子之外。 基本上,做成這樣的東西, 我不知道這要花費多大的成本, 但沒理由 這會比普通的汽車座椅要貴。 實際上,你看,這可以折疊起來,翻到座位後面。 平時這就是一個正常的成人用的座位,然後把它折下來, 孩子們就可以坐在上面。這個裝置跟車集成在一起。 對我來說,這似乎不可能是很貴的方案, 而且這肯定比我們現有要好得多。
So the question is, is there any hope for adoption of something like this, which would presumably save a lot of lives? And I think the answer, perhaps, lies in a story. The answer both to why has a car seat been so successful, and why this may someday be adopted or not, lies in a story that my dad told me, relating to when he was a doctor in the U.S. Air Force in England. And this is a long time ago: you were allowed to do things then you can't do today. So, my father would have patients come in who he thought were not really sick. And he had a big jar full of placebo pills that he would give them, and he'd say, "Come back in a week, if you still feel lousy." OK, and most of them would not come back, but some of them would come back. And when they came back, he, still convinced they were not sick, had another jar of pills. In this jar were huge horse pills. They were almost impossible to swallow. And these, to me, are the analogy for the car seats. People would look at these and say, "Man, this thing is so big and so hard to swallow. If this doesn't make me feel better, you know, what possibly could?"
問題是,這樣的東西有沒有希望被接受, 如果我們假設它可以挽救很多的生命? 我認為答案,有可能在以下的故事中找到。 這解釋了為什麼汽車座椅如此成功, 以及為什麼我的發明有一天可能會被接受,也可能不會。 答案就在以下我爸爸講給我的一個故事裏。他曾經是英國空軍駐軍 的醫生。而且這是很久以前的事兒了。 那時,你可以有自主權做一些今天不能做的事情。 那會兒,會有病人來找我父親看病, 但我爸發現他們並沒有病。 他就給病人開滿滿一大罐沒有藥效,純屬安慰性質的藥片, 然後說:“如果一星期之內你仍然感覺不好,就回來複診。” 好了,很多人不會回來, 也有人會回來複診。 但當他們回來的時候,他還是確信他們沒病, 再給他們一大罐藥片。這一罐裏裝的是那種特大的藥片。 這幾乎沒有可能吞下去。 而這些,對於我來說,就形同汽車座椅。 人們看著這些藥片會說:“天哪,這個東西這麼大, 這麼難以下咽。如果這都無法治好我, 你說,還有什麼可以?”
And it turned out that most people wouldn't come back, because it worked. But every once in a while, there was still a patient convinced that he was sick, and he'd come back. And my dad had a third jar of pills. And the jar of pills he had, he said, were the tiniest little pills he could find, so small you could barely see them. And he would say, listen, I know I gave you that huge pill, that complicated, hard-to-swallow pill before, but now I've got one that's so potent, that is really tiny and small and almost invisible. It's almost like this thing here, which you can't even see."
結果是,大多數的病人都不會回來 如果藥起了作用。但偶爾, 有這麼一兩個病人確信自己病得很厲害, 他還會第三次回來。而我爸爸就會拿出第三罐藥片。 他說,他手裏這罐藥片, 是那種他可以找到的最微型的, 小到幾乎看不見。 他說,聽著,我知道以前我給你開過那種大型藥片, 那種複雜,又不容易下咽的藥片。 現在,我有一種非常有效的藥, 但它很小,幾乎看不到。 就象這個東西一樣,你甚至無法看到。”
And it turned out that never, in all the times my dad gave out this pill, the really tiny pill, did anyone ever come back still complaining of sickness. So, my dad always took that as evidence that this little, teeny, powerful pill had the ultimate placebo effect. And in some sense, if that's the right story, I think integrated car seats you will see, very quickly, becoming something that everyone has. The other possible conclusion is, well, maybe after coming to my father three times, getting sent home with placebos, he still felt sick, he went and found another doctor. And that's completely possible. And if that's the case, then I think we're stuck with conventional car seats for a long time to come. Thank you very much.
結果,再也沒有, 在我爸把這些很小很小的藥片給出去之後, 再也沒有人回來抱怨自己病得很厲害了。 我爸經常拿這個說事兒, 說這些小得不能再小的強力藥片, 反而起到的心理慰籍的作用最大。在某種程度上來說,如果這個故事真的說明問題 , 我認為,你很快會看到,這個組合式的汽車座椅 將會成為每個人的必備。另外一個可能的結論 是,嗯,可能在回來找我父親看過三次病之後, 拿著安慰藥片回到家裏,他還是覺得不舒服, 他會去看另外一個醫生。 這是完全有可能的。而且,如果真是這樣的話, 我認為,在接下來很長一段時間裏,我只好繼續使用傳統的汽車座椅。 非常感謝。
(Applause)
(掌聲)
(Audience: I just wanted to ask you, when we wear seatbelts we don't necessarily wear them just to prevent loss of life, it's also to prevent lots of serious injury. Your data looks at fatalities. It doesn't look at serious injury. Is there any data to show that child seats are actually less effective, or just as effective as seatbelts for serious injury? Because that would prove your case.)
(觀眾:我只是想問你,當我們系上安全帶的時候, 我們並非只是用它防止車禍死亡的發生, 它也是用來防止車禍造成的受傷。 你的數據只是針對死亡率,並不包括嚴重受傷的情況。 有沒有數據可以顯示汽車座椅在防止受傷方面的, 效果並不明顯,或著沒有安全帶那麼明顯? 因為這才能證明你的論點。
Steven Levitt: Yeah, that's a great question. In my data, and in another data set I've looked at for New Jersey crashes, I find very small differences in injury. So in this data, it's statistically insignificant differences in injury between car seats and lap-and-shoulder belts. In the New Jersey data, which is different, because it's not just fatal crashes, but all crashes in New Jersey that are reported, it turns out that there is a 10 percent difference in injuries, but generally they're the minor injuries. Now, what's interesting, I should say this as a disclaimer, there is medical literature that is very difficult to resolve with this other data, which suggests that car seats are dramatically better.
是的,這個問題提得很好。在我的數據當中,包括另外一組 針對新澤西撞車試驗所研究的數據, 我發現兩種措施在減少受傷方面的差異很小。 在這個數據中,統計學上的差異微乎其微, 我是指在受傷方面,汽車座椅跟腰及肩安全帶相比較來說。 在新澤西的數據中,情況卻有所不同。 因為這不僅只是致命性的車禍, 而是所有在新澤西進行的撞車測試報告。 結果是,在防止受傷方面的差異是百分之十, 總的來說,車禍造成的都是很輕微的損傷。 有意思的是,我應該說,盡管不認同, 有篇醫學文獻用新澤西的數據很難解釋。 這篇文獻顯示,汽車座椅的安全性顯著地好於其它。
And they use a completely different methodology that involves -- after the crash occurs, they get from the insurance companies the names of the people who were in the crash, and they call them on the phone, and they asked them what happened. And I really can't resolve, yet, and I'd like to work with these medical researchers to try to understand how there can be these differences, which are completely at odds with one another. But it's obviously a critical question. The question is even if -- are there enough serious injuries to make these cost-effective? It's kind of tricky. Even if they're right, it's not so clear that they're so cost-effective.
他們用了一個完全不同的方法論,這包括 在撞車發生之後,他們從保險公司手裏拿到 車祸受害者的姓名, 然後打電話給他們, 詢問他們事情的經過。 我目前還解釋不了 但我很願意跟一些醫學研究工作者一起合作, 試圖找出這些差異是如何產生的, 簡直一個天上,一個地下。 這顯然是個不容忽視的問題。 問題是,即使,我們有沒有足夠多的車禍重傷的例子 使得我們的研究花費物有所值。這真的很難講。 就算他們的結果是正確的,我們還是無法弄清 汽車安全座椅的性價比是不是真的好。