How safe are we, really?

So, I have many thoughts on the big buzz about the new carseat "rules" and it makes me ask "How safe can we really be?".  I feel rather dumb not knowing that I should not have been keeping my kids coats on them in their carseats all this time.  Guess I should have read that manual all the way through.  However, my hubby is the manual reader in this family, so I will simply blame it on him.  I guess some would call me a bad parent for not knowing about the rear-facing until 2 rule with my second child.  That wasn't even the rule, though, with my first.  I have noticed something about Moms, each of us has our own "thing" we choose to obsess over.  I remember having conversations with my sister-in-law about something I never let J do & she might say she never worried about that.  Then later she would talk about something she would never let her daughter do, and I would say I never worried about that.

We all have material things or activities we are willing to give up for the safety of our children.  On that same note, though, we all have ways in which we are not willing to bend.  If I could prove that a child would be 10 times less likely to ever use recreational drugs if said child's parents took them to church every Sunday, would all these parents obsessing about coats with carseats immediately start going to church?  I mean, that is a big life change that so many would not be willing to make.  How many of us would stop driving all together?  How many of us would start carrying our kids around in a bubble if someone proved it was safer for our lungs?  Now I am not passing judgement on anyone (that is God's job, not mine) or even suggesting that I won't take my coats off my kids in the car now.  It just seems to me that as soon as we prove one way is safe and we get everyone to start doing it, then someone else disproves that person.  I am simply posing the questions that come to my mind whenever I see and hear people becoming obsessed about some new research.