How do you other parents that practice attachment parenting go about driving a car with your baby? Our baby is just happy alone in the car seat for a short while and then she protests. And we live out in the country so we have to take the car wherever we go.

How combine believe in baby-cries and baby-wearing with car rides?

Thanks for your answers!

With two adults in the car, have one sit in the back with the baby.

With one adult in the car, put the baby's car seat on the passenger side so you can touch and reassure occasionally, say at red lights.  Once the child is big enough to go in a forward facing seat, you can move it to the front if that's legal in your state.  If your front seat doesn't have an air bag sensor, deactivate the air bag to be extra safe for children under 10 or so; however, the air bag is primarily dangerous for children in backward facing car seats.  The issue is that the air bag has deadly force within the first few inches of deployment, and in a backward facing car seat, the child's head is much closer to the air bag.

Note that children are safer in an accident in the back seat even after they are older for the same reason that adults are safer in the back seat - there's extra crush room in a frontal impact.  However, I notice that most adults ride in the front seat anyway.  I'm willing to make the same tradeoff for my children, as I think they get more cognitive stimulation in the front seat.

Also note that accidents aren't the only concern.  Children have died from being forgotten in the back seat:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022701549_2.html?sid=ST2009030602446

My discussion and additional links here:

http://psychohist.livejournal.com/53777.html