First, the background: Hubby and I are driving to a friend’s house last night when we are passed on the interstate by a gray Mercedes. I notice that there’s blond hair blowing out of the sunroof. Wow, I think, that driver has some really long hair. Then I see a little pair of hands waving out of the sunroof, and a head emerges. They belong to a little girl of about three or four who is having the time of her life hanging out of the sunroof while her mother (or whoever) drives down the interstate. A few seconds later the little girl is replaced by a little boy of about the same age. My jaw drops. So does hubby’s. Ten seconds later I’m on the cell phone dialing the state Highway Patrol, giving them the make, model and license number of the car.
Now, the rant (which is probably lame): You stupid woman! How dare you let those two precious babies risk their lives by hanging out of the sunroof while you fly down the interstate at ninety mph. I know it was ninety because that’s how fast WE had to go to stay behind you while I read your tag number to the state troopers’ office. They shouldn’t have been able to reach the sunroof, you moron; they should have been in car seats! I will have nightmares for weeks in which you had to slam on your brakes suddenly and that beautiful little girl went flying over the car. I hope the highway patrol caught you and not only wrote you a ticket, but suspended your license and threw you in JAIL for being such an idiot. What you did was child abuse, pure and simple. You ought to be drawn and quartered.
Nightingale, I know exactly where you’re coming from. Last Friday, I was driving down an interstate at about 60 miles per hour when I noticed a minivan with a bumper sticker about cheerleading. Then next thing I noticed was a cute, blonde little girl with her head and shoulders sticking out of the passenger side window. She looked like she was just having fun, but we were moving fast in heavy traffic and approaching a tunnel. The minivan was in the fast lane, but still!
Sheesh what a bunch of crybabies in here, have we really come so far that for every act that does not completely fit out description of secure we have to call the cops? This place is going to hell in a handbasket and not because someone allowed their kid a bit of fun by sticking their head out of a window of a driving car. Fucking child abuse is when you press lighted cigarettes on the skin of your precious, beat them senseless or lock them into a fucking closet without light for some hours. Fine tale, you go go 90 miles an hour tailgating a car to satisfy your pissy little complexes to annoy the cops about something trivial to feel like the lone ranger, great I hope you feel good when you think about the possibility that the other car might have to break and you crash into it…
Why dont everyone in this thread takes a nice cup of shut the hell up and gets a life, maybe even a hobby like sueing your neighbours about a half inch stretch of garden for the next 27 years.
When I was a kid I was allowed to sit in the “treat seat” – the centre console of my dad’s 7 litre Ford Galaxy 500. I could sit in the “way back” of station wagons. I routinely rode in the beds of pickup trucks. I rode a mini-bike, and later, a motorcycle.
Is it responsible to allow a kid to stand up through a sunroof at 90mph? No. Should we legislate responsibility? I don’t think so. This is not the safest planet in the universe. (Well, maybe it is – but it’s certainly not a safe place.) When we try too hard to protect people, those people forget that there are dangers in the world. This, of course, leads to more legislation to protect those people too irresponsible to survive in “the real world”.
Am I callous? Am I overstating the case and playing the Devil’s Advocate? Maybe. But I do think that people should be responsible for their own actions and not rely on legislation to protect them from many things.
Agreed, and if it were an adult sticking their tom-fool head through the sunroof, then you’d be right. If it were a teenager, we’d have the grounds for a complicated debabte. But this was a small child–someone who cannot be expected to understand the physics behind what happens if you are travaling at 90 miles an hour and suddenly have to brake, or, god forbid, get in an accident. Children have the right to be protected from stupid parents–they aren’t property, they are people.
Twenty, thirty years ago there was nota wide spread public understanding of the need for restraints while driving. Today there is. That, among other things, is one reason why the rate of traffic deaths has remained steady at about 40,000/year even though the number of card on the road has increased exponentially.
Fine. I could live with that if you also subscribe to the following:’’
l. If you are hurt in a situation such as the above, YOU(or your parent) has to bear the entire weight of the cost of medical care, with no help from insurance or public assistance of any kind. Your insurance company should have the right to not pay a dime of your treatment. That way I don’t get socked paying highter premiums for your stupidity.
2. The parent should be charged with a crime if the minor child was hurt in an accident. And I don’t mean charged with child abuse. Negligent homicide comes to mind in case of a death.
Yeah, his rant may have gone too far in the other direction, and yes, those “precious babies” may have been in harms way, but the OP kind of reads like the kids were tied to the bumper and were being dragged down the highway.
I took his post as just adding a little perspective.
My post got lost, and no way am I typing it again.
Short version:
Good for you OPer.
<grumble>
Stupid assholes doing that with their children
</grumble>
Unfortunately, there only seems to be a $25 fine involved. If I had my way, there would be mayhem. Permanent injury. Humiliation. YMMV. And oviously does. “Got Kids?”
Ah hell. My father used to let me ride on the hood of the car (not at highway speeds, obviously). Best time of my life. But I guess he should have been arrested for letting me have a little fun at something that’s somewhat dangerous. I probably should never have climbed trees, either; studies have shown that thirty foot drops kill kids too. And swimming…water can drown you!
Sheesh. Give it thirty years and we’ll be legislating plastic bubbles for everybody under 18.
I don’t know where Nightingale is from, but in Pennsylvania, a child has to be in an appropriate child restraint from birth until 40 lbs. From 40 lbs. till the child is tall enough to be able to wear the seatbelt correctly, the child MUST be in a booster seat. No exceptions. Same thing in Texas.
Bubba Ray and WSLer, until you understand the pain of losing a child, shut the hell up yourselves. It’s one thing not to have the corners of the coffee table padded, but allowing your children to be put in harm’s way because of your own abject stupidity is neglect, pure and simple. Children shouldn’t have to pay with their lives because their mother is a brain-dead idiot. Nightingale did the right thing by calling the cops.
I’ll concede that calling the woman’s action child abuse was over the top. Consider the statement withdrawn with my apologies.
What I will not do is apologize for calling the non-emergency number for the highway patrol and reporting what I saw. It’s their job to enforce highway safety, and those children were in danger.
WSLer, I don’t know about the laws in your state, but Alabama requires that children three and under be in a child safety seat, that all children up to the age of six wear either a safety belt or sit in a booster seat, and that ALL front seat passengers wear a safety belt. So there were other laws being broken, not just speeding.
And for what it’s worth, my parents insisted that I wear a seat belt every time I got in a car. They couldn’t control what I did when I was with someone else, but you can be darn sure I was wearing a seat belt if I was with either of them.