It seems like at least once a week I see a kid or kids in a car where I want so much to pull along side and give their parents a lecture. Kids without car seats, kids without seatbelts. Tonight it was this dumb bint putting her kid, six or seven, in the front seat. She put the seat belt on him, so maybe she cares, but how can she NOT KNOW that if the airbag in front of him goes off, it could injure or kill her son? :mad:
I wanted to say something, but I am positive that would have just earned me a ‘butt out’ at best, or possibly a torrent of obscenity or threats.
Is there any good way to tell a complete stranger that they are being an idiot?
Six or seven is plenty old enough for adult seatbelt arrangements (front seats and rear), in fact I doubt booster seats are even available for kids that age: they’re certainly not in Australia.
Re: the airbag. Are you suggesting that the bag will kill a child if it goes off inadvertantly, or that it will provide inadequate protection in case of an accident thereby killing the child that way. I’m not that familiar with airbag mechanics, so can you enlighten me here please?
According to articles like this one (about a year ago there was a piece about this in one of the big car mags), properly applied restraint is what has made the difference over time in child safety, not having the child sit in the back seat.
Air bags have been known to kill short adults (under five feet) and children upon deployment. A diminutive Toronto University professor was killed in a fender-bender because her bumper was tapped from behind by another vehicle and her airbag deployed in her face. When her husband got her personal effects back from the coroner, her rings had been crushed flat.
Nobody’s putting little kids in the front seat anymore because just after passenger airbags became common a woman had a low-impact wreck and her 2-yr-old, sitting in the front seat, was decapitated. I have a vivid memory of reading that one ::shudder::.
OTOH, there are certain cars where the passenger airbag can be turned off.
You might want to check out your state’s laws, because they do vary, and if you see someone blatantly violating them, call 911 or something. Same as you would if you saw a drunk weaving around. I think Chicago had an alternative number, perhaps 311, for bad drivers?
Child Safety Seat Requirements
Children under the age of 8 must be secured in an appropriate child restraint system, more commonly called a safety seat. Child safety seats include infant seats, convertible seats (rear-facing for infants and forward-facing for toddlers) and booster seats that are used with the vehicle lap shoulder belt system. The parent or legal guardian of a child under the age of eight years is responsible for providing a child safety seat to anyone who transports his or her child.
Children weighing more than 40 pounds may be transported in the back seat of a motor vehicle while wearing only a lap belt if the back seat is not equipped with a lap and shoulder belt system.
Children ages 8 years of age or older but under the age of 16 must be secured in a properly adjusted safety belt in any position in the vehicle.
Persons in violation of this law will be subject to a $50 fine for a first offense. This fine will be waived upon proof of possession of an approved safety seat. Subsequent violations are punishable with a $100 fine.
I just barely started letting my 13 year-old son ride in the front, even though he has been taller than me for at least a year now.
I have said something to people, but it is a tough call. The lady I spoke to took it well but I can see it going bad, too. If they have a bumper sticker that says “How’s my driving- call 1-800-EAT-SHIT” or “My kid can beat up your honor student”, you should probably not say anything.
I don’t know about Austrailia, but most of the Booster seats in the US go to 80 or 100 lbs. That is plenty big enought to hold the average six or seven year old.
Regarding butting in, I too, am annoyed when I see people improperly restraining their children. However, sometimes there are situations that we don’t know about. What if none of the seatbelts in the back seat are functioning properly? There are loopholes in the laws that cover this.
However, I do lift an eyebrow when I see people with rear-facing only infantseats, that have them foward facing and are strapping their two-year-old into it.
In answer to the OP, it’s all in the spin…
If you come off as critical or patronizing, implying this person is a bad/stupid parent, you will encounter no end of hostility. But, if you are being helpful and informative and trying to save them money, that’s a different story. The CHP puts out phamplets defining carseat laws and saying something like “My friend got a 300 dollar ticket for putting her 6 year old up front” won’t come off as preachy or nosy, just helpful.
It’s illegal in my state not to have children in the proper seat restraints or safety seats. I don’t know what the laws are where you live, but can’t you call the police with a description and license plate number?
I can’t remember, it’s just the image of the kid’s head flying off that stuck with me. But I don’t recall that the mother was considered in any way responsible — it was more like, oops, we never considered what would happen when a tiny person got hit in the face with an airbag. Shera - Are you seeing people stick toddlers in their Graco Snugrides or something? I can’t even imagine, mine were in convertible seats (rear facing) before their first birthday.
It’s not that a child is more likely to get injured by a airbag, but a person sitting close enough to be hit by the airbag deploying. If the child’s seat does not leave him in the deployment zone then this is not a issue.
The real problem is for people who sit too close to the steering wheel, normally short adults.
I just finished the book Freakonomics in which it’s claimed that much of the child car safety campaign, several hysterias du-jour in fact, are
This is in the context of the argument that parents are obsessive about the wrong risks. He says your child is a hundred times more likely to die in a swimming pool accident than to be shot with the gun your neighbors keep in their bedstand, yet given the choice, many parents who would not think twice about their kid spending summer afternoons in the neighbor’s backyard swimming pool wouldn’t allow their child to play in the gun-keeping house.
The point is (while any risk is worth reducing when it comes to your kids’ safety and so on and so forth, please don’t flame me) maybe it’s not the extreme hazard we’re told to think it is.
The hazard comes in not belting your child appropriately with restraints that fit, not with which seat the child sits in per se. Except for rear-facing infant seats (which no matter how you put them in the front seat, even with it ratcheted all the way back, will put the head of an infant/toddler too close to a deploying airbag for comfort), belting a child in an adequately fitting shoulder/lap restraint in a front seat and paying attention to the placement of the seat vs. the airbag will allow it to be a safety enhancement rather than a hazard – see my cite above (which means adequate distance to prevent harm, which means having the seat as far back from the dashboard as it can go and the child sitting to the rear of the seat, not at the forward edge of the seat). Few small children will sit stolidly in a ratcheted-back seat wearing their specially-fitted child restraint device for long periods, however, and lesser forms of restraint are safer in the back seat, so that may guide decision-making for parents as well.
Yes, the risk is small compared to NUMEROUS other risks, and compared to the benefits/lives saved attributed to airbags. But what gets people about this one is that it’s very visible (dozens of people don’t see you allowing your child to go to the neighbour’s unsupervised swimming pool, but dozens see you driving with your child in the front seat – hence the OP wondering about how to intervene), and there is a certain dramatic irony in having the use of a safety device result in the memorable image of a kid’s head flying off.
It’s probably an Americanism, too; if we can just buy the right thing, surely we’ll be Perfectly Safe and Protected.
I get into similar arguments in the mommy communities about “stranger danger”. The odds of our toddlers being snatched over the backyard fence, or from a department store, are miniscule compared to the risk of an 11-yr-old being molested by a family member or friend, but very few moms let their kids play outdoors unsupervised.
And don’t even ask Californians about letting their kids use a public toilet on their own. There was a horrific murder in a rest stop bathroom many years ago (a 9 yr-old was killed as his Aunt waited outside the door). That image is burned into many minds as well.
I read somewhere something and I now can’t remember where I read it. What I read was that past age two or so, it doesn’t make any difference, statistically speaking, whether they are secured in a car seat in the back seat or not. There was no difference, in other words, between the stats on injuries and deaths where the kids were sitting in the back seat in a car seat, and where they were sitting in the back seat with a seat belt on.
Is this true? Where are the best statistics on this to be found?
At least here in the states, we’ve got car seats for kids up to around 10 years old. In many states, the kid has to be in a car seat until eight years old, by law. The average required age is around 6, but many states are moving up to the eight year old requirement.