Children and Seatbelts

I can't believe the number of people who drive their children around unbuckled in the car. I've seen the children leaning out of the fully open window, the children standing in the middle of the two front seats, and my all time favourite one has to be the 3 year old feeding her young brother with them facing each other on the front passenger seat of the car while the mother drove. The youngster was standing up leaning against the door. If there had been an accident he wouldn't have stood a chance.

What fascinates me most is that while the youngsters are free to bob around in the car, the parents are always well strapped in.

A few weeks ago I saw something that made my spine shiver. There is a mother driving her very nice expensive car, all strapped in safely. There's here son who looks no older than my youngest and so he'd be about 2, kneeling on the front passenger seat, window wide open and him leaning out. OK, you say probably not the safest thing in the world to do but still, where's the problem. The problem comes in that the next thing you see, she's doing a U-turn on a busy main road, who's speed limit is never adhered to. Of course, the youngest is closest to the oncoming traffic as she blindly performs the U-turn. If, heaven forbid and luckily they weren't, struck by another car that poor child would have been head over heels in the air, flung across two lanes of fast moving traffic. The chances of him survinging that uninjured to me would be 0.

I'm not perfect and yes my children do sometimes travel in the car out of their seats, but they always have the seatbelt done up. In fact they know that if their seatbelts aren't on the car isn't going anywhere. If we're driving and the elder one underdoes her seatbelt the car stops.

Yes, I fully understand that these parents are all wonderful drivers and have never ever had an accident, but what about the other idiots on the road who aren't so careful. It's not you that you need to watch out for but rather the idiot who doesn't understand about following distances in the wet, or lights when it's dark, or what that strange thing called a brake is for.

I've seen the devastating effects that a car accident can have on a child. A few years back I met a lovely 4 year old girl and her parents. Where did I meet them, in the High Care Unit of the Paediatric ward of our local hospital. They'd been driving home one New Year's Day in the early hours of the morning. Their beautiful daughter was fast asleep when they wanted to go, so mom sat her on her lap in the passenger seat of the car. Almost home and some drunken fool, who didn't/couldn't remember the Rules of the Road, came tearing through a red light, smack, bang, wallop into the passenger side of the car. The daughter was thrown through the windscreen, her mom was crushed with the car like a sardine.

There but within the space of a split second, their beautiful, bubbly, lively and active girl was comatose, with a broken arm and leg. She spent many months in the ICU hooked up to just about every piece of machinery they had. When she did wake up, she was brain damaged and had to relearn everything again. Fortunately, she was able to learn to walk and run again, etc, but she was never the same vibrant young girl that she had been before the accident.

So, I beg of you, please think of your child's safety before you do something so crazy as to drive with them in the car without their seatbelt on. I'd hate for you to be a statistic for want of saving yourself a couple of seconds in the car.