Child safety

When I was little, kids travelled in cars without restraints. We sat in the back, most often, but because cars did not have seat belts in the back, we just sat on the seat, or lay in a carry-cot on the seat. However, as safety standards have risen, so the laws regarding child safety in cars has also changed.

The law about no under-12s in the front is still in place. It is now more dangerous than ever for kids to sit in the front of vehicles that have the highest safety systems ever - deployed airbags can kill them. Similarly, since it is now compulsory for cars to have rear seat belts, it is now compulsory for kids to be buckled in. As most people know, seat belts are designed for adults, not children. Children who use adult seat belts risk being killed in an accident. Thus, kids should only be strapped into age and weight appropriate car seats or booster seats.

However, it would seem that for many Saffas, that message still has to hit home. Driving around, I regularly see kids in the front of the car, not strapped in, standing and playing with toys on the dashboard; or worse, standing between the two front seats. It horrifies me. Don't those parents care? Don't they love their children? OK, so most of the offenders I see are clearly from poor families, so no doubt cannot afford car seats, but at least the kids should be sitting down in the back.

Why has this issue raised its head for me again? Because I'm rediscovering how inconvenient it is to have a small baby that needs regular feeding, but is not yet in a routine. On the way home from G's brother's wedding in Rawsonville, the little man decided it was time for a feed. We had decided to take the R101 back to Cape Town, rather than the tunnel. This was a fortunate choice as it meant we could stop at a viewpoint and, while he fed, we could appreciate the beauty of the Paarl and Wellington valleys. It would have been more convenient though for G to drive and for me to sit in the front or the back feeding Nate. We were all exhausted and the sooner we could get home, the better. (As it was, I fell asleep behind the wheel a few hundred metres from our home! Fortunately, only for a millisecond, and fortunately, no damage was done - but it was VERY scary!)

I am often tempted to ignore the car safety rules. I am often tempted to just go the 'short' distance to the shops, or wherever, without properly strapping the kids in. It's a schlep to strap them in properly. It takes several minutes to strap them in, and get them unstrapped. If all I want to do is pop to Spar for bread, do I really want to increase the trip length by 10 mins to strap the kids in at both ends of the trip?

BUT - statistics show that most serious accidents occur within a very short distance of the car's occupants' homes. Take my little failure - if I had fallen asleep a moment later, or for a moment longer, I would have hit the curb as the road curved. I wasn't travelling too fast, but it might have caused serious damage to the car. That, in turn, might have put us in a dangerous situation and put the kids at risk. Imagine if there'd been another car on the road at the time. It could have been really awful. If something had happened, and the kids had not been properly strapped in, and something had happened to them, could I ever forgive myself? It's one thing to lose a child 'naturally'; it's quite another to lose a child through a car 'accident'. Car 'accidents' are seldom accidents. Someone is usually at fault for not following the rules of the road.

Yet, knowing all this, there are times when I fail to strap Nellie in. The only time I go against my better judgement is if we've been out for dinner and Nellie has fallen asleep at our host's place. Then, G will sit in the back with her in his arms and I will drive. Usually, it is a very short trip (less than 10km) and usually, I take all the back roads to avoid other vehicles. The fact remains though, that it is always night time, and that in the dark accidents are more likely to occur. So why do we do it? Because, like everyone else, we believe ourselves to be invulnerable, immortal, and otherwise not at risk. Stupid, isn't it?

So while I rage at those who take risks with their kids, I have to confess that I am guilty too. It's easy to rationalise my actions: We don't want Nellie to wake up; if she were to wake up it would be a hassle to get her back to sleep; it's quicker and easier not to have to strap her in; it's such a short trip - nothing will happen; etc, etc.

And yet.... I know that I am at least aware of the risks. I don't know that the others I see driving around with their kids in very dangerous positions do. I feel so protective towards those kids I want to stop the driver and ask if he/ she really loves the child. I don't, because I imagine that most people would get very upset with me, and in Cape Town my fear is that he (interestingly, most often, it is a guy... I've just realised that. I wonder why? Are women instinctively more protective of their kids, or are fewer mothers drivers?) will pull a gun on me, or otherwise threaten me with violence. I don't want to put myself at risk, because I would hate for my kids to grow up without their mother.

So yet again, I feel guilty. By failing to intervene and by failing to seek to protect the kids, doesn't that make me an accomplice to the crime in the same way that someone who witnesses a murder and fails to report it is an accomplice? What a big mess!