Ditto here. I’ll settle for being called a “self-righteous rampant a–” 100 times if even one person takes my advice when I give them “the speech.” Flame away at me if you will…
Zev Steinhardt
My husband was just in a car accident last night. The person he hit blew a stop sign. She had a 4 year old unbelted and uncar seated in the back.
This is what happened: It was a very low speed crash on the streets of NY. The airbags did not deploy. Our front end was crumpled to nothing, however.
In the other car the kid bounced from one door to the next and then came to a stop when he hit the back of the front seat and proceeded to scream at the top of his voice. My husband thought he’d killed the poor child. Especially when he saw the blood.
The kid busted his lip while being bounced around, that was it. But this was at 15 miles an hour! (We were doing 15. His car was doing maybe 5). When the police came they asked the mom if she had a car seat, she said “Yes” and that was the end of that.
It was plainly obvious that there was no freakin’ car seat in her car. It was also obvious that the kid was bounced around in the accident. But the police gave her one ticket for blowing the stop sign-- and that was it.
Everyone was very civil, but don’t think I didn’t call her husband to the side --he arrived later in his own car-- and tell him that if his wife was in the habit of not stopping for stop signs, the least the two of them could do was strap the kid in.
PS, to all of those who say it’s a choice-- that kid had no goddamned choice. If that kid had went out the window, my husband would have had no fucking choice but to live with the fact that he killed the kid. In fact he’s still shaken up-- that scream and that blood! Holy Fuck!
That woman got no ticket, she didn’t suffer the bloody lip, she wasn’t bounced around in the car because she had her seatbelt on. What an incredibly stupid, idiotic bitch.
Sorry, I was out at Starbucks, doing the Coffee Run for the First Annual Gathering of The Most Self-Righteous A***'s.
Thanks for saving my place in line, Diane. Sorry about that Three Stooges crack. 
Now, who ordered the Quadruple Thick Cinnamon+ Chai with Vanilla and Herbal Incantations Chanted As It Was Steamed?
I oughta just hire Starbucks to do an on-site kiosk. There’s 22,000 of us, after all- and only a precious few are choking on their arrogance.
Zev, a word about 9th Century Talmudic Writings if you please?..
Oh god damn, Biggie, thank god I looked on Preview. I’m glad the child is basically all right. Was he taken away to be MRI’d anyway? If he flew and hit his face, that equals a trauma above the sternum, in NYS that is an automatic trip in a cervical collar, spider straps and backboard until the ER Doc is sure that the child hasn’t injured the cervical…
Of course, despite another first-hand awful story, I’ve no doubt but that nothing here will change. Please give my best wishes to Hubby, who I’ve broken bread with and dearly wish to break bread with again.
What a day. 
Cartooniverse
Careful Big Girl, your husband’s emotional shake up from splitting this kids lip could be interpreted as being a Self-Righteous Rampant Asshole.
It does bring up an attitional facet to the debate.
I drive carefully, but accidents do happen. You don’t want to buckle yourself up, fine, but God damn it, don’t put the death of your child on my shoulders and in my nightmares for the rest of my life because you are too God damn lazy to keep your kid secured and away from airbags.
Cartoon - screw the coffee, I’m ready for a shot of tequila. It is after Beer:30 p.m. someplace in the country, right?
You know 'Toon, by the time the police arrived a half an hour later (they came after the husband) the kid was running around laughing and jumping, with his dad yelling at him to stay out of the street.
The police just sort of did. . . nothing. They wrote down what everyone said. My husband’s story and the woman’s story were basically the same. The cops called a tow truck, gave the woman a ticket (for running the stop sign) and sat in their car. They were still sitting in their car when the tow truck took us away.
You would think the police would at least say something to the woman. Give her a warning-- anything!
We just bought that car two weeks ago.
"Sorry, I was out at Starbucks, doing the Coffee Run for the First Annual Gathering of The Most Self-Righteous A**'s."*
Well, that explains who’s buying all that nasty-ass, overpriced corporate coffee.
:rolleyes:
Biggirl’s post, I’d be far more likely to take to heart if I didn’t already belt my kids in every time, because she hasn’t resorted to telling everyone in the thread who’s not crawling up your asses with apologies horrible names. She stated what happened - her personal experience - and seemed more concerned that the kid was okay, than that the mom was a …what was that delightful term? Oh yeah. “Fucknugget.” Had a few choice words for her, yeah, but she seems genuinely more interested in the welfare of the kid than the stupidity of the parents. I’m sure the rest of you think you have, too. shrug I disagree. I think the message is being utterly lost in the vitriol.
I’m slinging horrible names, sure…but I also hold no hope of getting anyone to see any point but their own. And since you’re all so busy insisting that “fucknugget” is, indeed, the appropriate moniker for rjung, and both not saying one’s a bad parent and then turning around and saying, “Oh no, wait, Hera’s gonna be down here to exact revenge on you,” the best entertainment I can hope for is to keep flinging the insults and watch you bat them away and suck each other’s toes.
I’d take up smoking crack, I swear, except it’d set a bad example for the kids. And I can’t afford it.
Fortunately, not being able to afford crack is the least of my worries since I should expect a visit from Child Protective Services any second now since I let my kid ride home from school in the front seat four or five times this year.
Go ahead and pile on. Got more important worries than this. Like the fact that even if my kids are all restrained properly and I am obeying all traffic laws, if some moron broadsides me and sends us all to the hospital, I won’t be able to AFFORD to get my kids the kind of health care they’ll need.
(Feel free to ignore the first part of the third sentence and pile on the “irresponsibility” factor, whether it’s relevant in that circumstance or not. I don’t mind at all.)
Rilchiam,
I’ll state my position as clearly as I can, one more time. My position is there are a lot of things parents do that adds just a tiny bit to their convenience yet makes the odds their child will die slightly higher. One choice that makes the odds of a child dying slightly higher is the choice to bring a child to Wal-Mart. DRIVING to Wal-Mart through numerous intersections increases the odds of a child being killed during that time, if the alternative is having the child stay at home being supervised by another parent.
So my point is, criticism of a parent who rocks their child to sleep in the backseat on the freeway during a long trip is not justified unless you also criticize other choices with equal or lesser benefit, and equal or greater increase in risk of death. On of the hundreds of possible examples of such choices is my Wal-Mart example. Since no one here is willing to criticize the parent who unnecessarily drove their child to Wal-Mart, not one can legitimately criticize a parent for rocking their child to sleep in the backseat during a long trip.
As SHOULD be obvious, NONE of my equations were meant to show that taking a child out does not increase risk. My position has always been the opposite of what people keep claiming. People who are repeatedly argue that taking a child out of a car seat increases risk are arguing to no one here, since no one disagrees. They are just making themselves look like fools.
Biggirl,
You provided an example of an irresponsible parent with no car seat in the car driving a kid around New York City. All here agree that is irresponsible so that has nothing to do with my argument, not that you thought it did. If anything, it bolsters my argument because it hints at how dangerous intersections are. I realize of course it does not bolster my argument because it is an anecdote. (I do not minimize what a major event this was in you life. I wish your family the best of luck.)
Kabbes,
The purpose my formulas was not to show that parents will maximize utility by keeping their child always buckled. The purpose was to show the risk of death is small compared to other risks of death no one here is complaining about. I think you are wrong if you think that for all responsible parents such a utility formula would never result in a baby being rocked in a back seat.
NOTE: The rest of this post is ONLY addressing kabbes‘s false claim that parental guilt should be an overriding factor in matters of choices about risk. If anyone responds that no terrorist is forcing you to take your child out of a car seat, or that I am arguing that car seats increase risk, you will only be displaying your own stupidity.
Consider the following. A terrorist is going to force your child to drink from one 10 cups, some will be poisoned. Then you may both go free. He gives you the choice that either you pick the cup or your son does. If you pick the cup, he will have 2 cups poisoned. If your son picks the cup he will have 4 cups poisoned. Suppose, because you are as irratinal as other posters here (Hard I know-please try.), that you know that if YOU pick the wrong cup you will feel much more guilt than if your son picks the wrong cup. Should you make your decision about who picks that cup based on minimizing your potential guilt or should you ignore your potential guilt and pick the cup yourself, thereby reducing the chance your son dies? The obvious answer is that when parents based their decisions on their own potential guilt as opposed to actual risk they are misguided.
Here’s something that I haven’t seen mentioned yet: what if something catastrophic happens to your vehicle during those 15 minutes?
An MP3 of that 911 call is available via the link.
Funeral costs on top of hospital treatment isn’t cheap. You don’t want to know the emotional costs, trust me.
You know what?
Fuck the argument you’re getting from me on how to be a responsible parent.
Fuck the attitude I sending that makes you believe I am a Self-Righteous Rampant Asshole.
Fuck my concern for children who are being put at risk for the convenience of their parents.
Fuck killer jammies and death trap supermarkets.
My Self-Righteous Rampant Asshole behavior is now turning selfish.
YOUR failure (or any other parent’s) to take 5 extra seconds to insist that your child is always secured in a seat belt or infant seat or to insure that they aren’t in danger of being hit with the airbag (you do realize that you don’t need to be going fast to hit hard enough to deploy, don’t you?), puts ME at risk of accidentally being involved in the death of YOUR child.
Whether or not I am at fault in an accident, I would be severely affected for the rest of my life if I was involved in an accident that killed a child. So yeah, it does piss me off to the point that I call people fuckwads on a message board when they are so Goddamned certain that little junior is going to be safe and sound in the front seat during the ride home from school or on mama’s lap the last few blocks from home. I’m not so Goddamned certain.
That’s a risk YOU choose to take for YOUR child, but what you fail to understand is that every time you decide to take that risk, no matter how small it may be, you are increasing MY chance of killing YOUR child if WE have an accident.
I don’t appreciate YOU making that decision for ME.
Got it?
sail - What the fuck is all that noise you’re making? Never mind, I don’t wanna know.
The risk is negated by putting the child in a car seat.
**
You ARE on crack. Oops, that was an insult, and I didn’t get my Self Righteous Rampant A** union card yet. Parental guilt cannot be justified away. How can you not understand that?
Jeff Olsen: Thanks for the link.
sail: Satire? Uh-uh. This is not the place for it.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by sail *
"So my point is, criticism of a parent who rocks their child to sleep in the backseat on the freeway during a long trip is not justified unless you also criticize other choices with equal or lesser benefit, and equal or greater increase in risk of death. On of the hundreds of possible examples of such choices is my Wal-Mart example. Since no one here is willing to criticize the parent who unnecessarily drove their child to Wal-Mart, not one can legitimately criticize a parent for rocking their child to sleep in the backseat during a long trip."
sail - I just want to remind you of the topic at hand… we are talking about parents who refuse to buckle their children in. You have admitted to being one of those parents.
Any parent who chooses to rock their child to sleep while driving on the freeway is deserving of the harshest criticism possible because they are putting their child in a position of high risk if an accident were to occur. To put your child in a position of risk because it is convenient is a lazy and irresponsible parent.
Any parent who knows that this behaviour increases the risk of injury to their child in the event of an accident yet continues in this activity is a fool. I define a fool as a person who possesses knowledge yet refuses to apply that knowlege to it’s full benefit.
**“As SHOULD be obvious, NONE of my equations were meant to show that taking a child out does not increase risk. My position has always been the opposite of what people keep claiming. People who are repeatedly argue that taking a child out of a car seat increases risk are arguing to no one here, since no one disagrees. They are just making themselves look like fools.”
**
There isn’t any argument about the fact that unbuckled children are at high risk in the event of an accident. We all know this and seem to be in agreement.
In case you haven’t noticed, our argument is with you for trying to justify why you would ever consider removing your child from his car seat while your vehicle is in motion.
Let’s stick to this and leave the WalMart parents to their own thread… okay?
Let’s address your behaviour.
If we’re lucky you will never remove your child from his car seat for convenience sake again. Ever.
If we’re lucky your child might someday owe a bunch a “fools” his life because his father was responsible enough to keep him buckled in despite his protests.
We’re really not asking for that much.
Rilcciam,
No the risk is NOT negated by a car seat, it is reduced. There is still a risk of your child dying if you drive your child to Wal-Mart using car seat. The only way to negate that risk is not to bring the child at all. Risk involves both the probability of an accident and the probablity of death given an accident. They must be taken together. Focusing on the latter to make the risk seem higher is not a correct way to access risk.
Feynn,
Thanks for the proof you cannot counter my argument. Why are you afraid to condemn my hypothetical Wal-Mart shopper? Why do you wish so bad it would just go away without you having to address it? Because you would look like a fool, just as you look like a fool when criticizing me and others like me.
(By the way, I do not refuse to buckle my child in by the way. Nice false accusation.)
what we seem to be criticizing (and you’ve not been able to refute) is that the parent/adult unbuckling child while on highway to rock them to sleep is putting that child at more risk than the same parent, same child, same vehicle, same road but not unbuckling said child.
any other comparision is comparing apples/oranges/fruit of your choice.
and, if you choose ‘increased personal comfort’ over ‘increased safety’, you’re making a poor choice, in our eyes.
Sail - read my last post. Can you give me a good reason why I shouldn’t be pissed off at neglectful parents such as yourself when you increase my chances of killing your child in the event of an accident?
It may be prudent for me to provide a disclaimer statement for the benefit of the jumping-to-conclusions-about-someone’s-character camp. So here it goes:
I love seatbelts. They save thousands of lives every year, and I wear mine religiously. The road is a much safer place now that car companies are forced to the put the little buggers in every vehicle they peddle. Every time a minor is in my car (not a very frequent thing, granted), they are required to wear their seatbelt. In those rare circumstances when I’m not wearing a seatbelt, I feel as naked and awkward as a teenaged boy trying to screw for the first time. So I love seatbelts. Every time an American buckles up we get that much closer to winning the War on Terrorism. Yes indeedy.
To those who have problems with the arguments raised by sail and Iamsocool, I think you are missing the point. They didn’t come on this thread to promote an agenda; rather they are are pointing out that the rancor some of you display towards the occasional disuse of seatbelts seems disproportionately large when compared with other activities that incur preventable risk. The end. Period. So why is this thread 5 pages long? Am I the only one who feels as if a major chunk of cyberspace could have been saved if people weren’t so hell-bent on making others feel ashamed of themselves?
No one has said that not buckling up kids is a laudable, Christ-like deed, but after reading a number of posts dedicated to calling complete strangers irresponsible mental-case fuckwads, you could come away thinking someone had said that and much worse. I bet someone is now going to call me an idiot for having the audacity to find the tone of this thread irksome. Well, hit me with your best shot, people. I find it amusing that self-proclaimed obliterators of ignorance can speak so fluently the language of ignoramuses. So well, in fact, that one has to wonder if that is their mother tongue.
Yes, seatbelts should be worn at all times. Yes, parents should put the safety of their offspring before all else. Yes, free-roaming crumbsnatchers in a moving vehicle is a big no-no. Yes, infants should be strapped in carseats.
But failure to comply with these “rules” 100% of the time does not equal incompetent parenting nor does it warrant putting the children in foster care. All sail and Iamsocool are calling for is a little perspective here.
I’ve said enough. Commence to railing some more if you must.
you with the face put across every concept I’ve wanted to and more, AND more eloquently and less offensively. Thank you.
This page is five pages long because you and and Iamsocool and Sail and rjung are still not admitting that taking a child out of a carseat because “i’m tired of them nagging or whining” was not smart and in fact increased the chances of harm to the child.
instead, they provided us with a thousand other arguments of stuff that is even LESS safe, like throwing kids of a cliff, or setting them on fire or whatever.
If even one them came in here and said, “yeah, I know it was stupid to do…I’ll be more careful in the future” I’d say “hey, nobody’s perfect”
But to try and convince me that taking a child out of a carseat so you can make better time on the highway is not my bag.
j
bullshit.
I’ve not ‘railed’ at anyone, except to wonder ‘how does one justify increasing risk for their child, when the alternative is easy and available’.
And all of the justifications that I’ve heard amounted to :
- It’s only for a short while.
- It’s only done rarely.
- It’s only 'cause the kid was screaming, mom was upset etc.
- There’s lots of other risks out there.
None of which, to me, justify increasing that specific risk. Obviously their mileage varied. And, others added in:
That parent choosing to risk their child’s safety, also had potential for consequences for others (the emergency crews, the other driver etc.)/
Note, none of us are advocating that you apply 50 pounds of cotton baling to your child and never let them out of your sight etc. What we are advocating, and all the others even agree, is that keeping the kid in an approved seat belt/safety seat is a very good idea, increasing the safety of the little ones.
where we disagree seems to be “except when…” and the bottom line to that seemed to have been able to be labeled ‘convenience/ easier for parent’.
I have a difficult time believing that some people are even advocating that ‘well, sometimes the risk is worth it’.
Storing poisonous Koolaid colored cleaners in unlocked, floor level cupboards is a bad idea when you have toddlers.
Batting fast pitch baseball without a helmet is not smart.
Leaving a baby in the bathtub while you take a phone call is dangerous.
But you know what??? Here’s the part that just went flapping over your head like a seagull.
WE. ARE. TALKING. ABOUT. SECURING. YOUR. KID. IN. THE. CAR. TO. REDUCE. THE. RISK. OF. DEATH.
Not about every other danger that can happen and what you can do to reduce chance of severe injury or death.
Cars. Seatbelts. Risks. Kids.
Comprehende’?
Coming in loud and clear?
Oh give me a fucking break, Sparky. Where in this thread has anyone said that these kids should be put in foster care? FWIIW, I wouldn’t even consider it appropriate action to take a kid from his parents if they never buckled him up.
Nice try at hyperbole, however.