Does Your Child Ride Up Front?
June 27, 2009 by Eliza Ferree
Filed under Family, Parenting
Normally I don’t care if I see a child sitting in the front seat of a car. At least not if they are properly buckled, now the ones I can’t stand are ones with no seat belt or moving around in their seat and making it obvious that they aren’t belted in.
IMG: Sxc.hu
Another pet peeve of mine is the parent that is driving and has children jumping around in the backseat of the car.
Have you ever seen either scenario? Or are you one of these that let your child do it and just figure it is better than fighting? Well if you happen to live in Michigan it is now ILLEGAL to allow a child under 4 in the car without properly buckling them in. It doesn’t matter if it is or is not your child, if you are driving you are responsible.
By the way if you put a young child in the front seat make sure the airbags are deactivated.
What is the point of this post? It started as a rant, but developed into a bunch of discordant information. Describing this all as a pet peeve seems a little limited. It is akin to saying “It drives me nuts when I see a parent beating the hell out of their kids”…gum smacking is a pet peeve, endangering a child is much more.
As for the information about Michigan – the information presented isn’t new or entirely accurate. The state of Michigan has laws in place that require children 7 and under or up to 57″ to be in a child safety restraint (booster or car seat). The article that was cited here is pertaining to children riding in the front seat. If you take a look at the following website, you’ll see that every state has a law in place requiring young children to be properly restrained in a child restraint. http://www.iihs.org/laws/childrestraint.aspx
Bliss used to have great information but lately it is just a jumble of poorly written, slapped together articles that do not encourage discussion or any sort of after thought. Shame on you, Bliss, for not encouraging your contributors to do a better job.
You are right, I did try throwing two things in the same article and I’m sorry about that. I will refrain from doing that again. As to why I threw in the Michigan piece it was because I typed in seat belts and found Michigan had just got a new law on it and I was shocked as I thought all states had this law. I’ll be posting a rant for all in a few. I’m sure there are many of us that have seen things like this and have their own words and stories to share with us.
again, I think you are misrepresenting the article that you presented. Michigan has always had laws pertaining to child restraints being used, but just recently passed a law stating that those child restraints should be used in the back seat if possible. Many states do not state a preference in whether or not a restraint should be used in the back or front seats.
Unfortunately the fines for being caught without a child in a restraint are almost nothing. If you aren’t philosophically opposed to loosing a child in a moving vehicle because of safety issues, are you going to be deterred by a $10 fine? Probably not.
Getting down to what I know you’re referencing. I hate seeing children without car seats. I’ve seen infants on adults laps, toddlers bouncing around in the backseats – standing on the seats, even. I wish the law took a harder stance on this issue. I realize that some parents might take an issue with how expensive car seats can be, and last I checked the state (at least in Louisiana) had public programs in place that allowed parents to receive a car seat at little to no cost to them. I believe Texas has similar allowances. The truth is, our cars drive faster than ever before and with that increased speed comes more devastating accidents. As citizens, we cannot be so cavalier about our children’s safety.
When I had my children (youngest is 11, oldest is 18) you could not leave the hospital without a safety seat. They checked and made sure you knew how to use it properly. This was in California.
My boyfriend and I got into a discussion about something similar to this last night. He feels that laws governing vehicle safety are worthless – he’s referring to helmet laws, cell phone laws. He said why don’t they give a ticket if you are distracted by changing your radio station? I did not follow the logic of his argument. I think if you are on the road, you owe it to yourself and your fellow travelers to be safe. Buckle up, pay attention, get where you need to go.
he does have a point on the radio station, but you don’t hear about it too much these days. I do try making sure to have mine on one channel before turning the car on. But I’ve seen folks argue over it while driving. To this day I still hate cell phone drivers, pull the car OVER before chatting it up, oh this could really get me going but I’ll save this for another post.