Car Seats

I was taking the children on a walk the other day when I saw a woman pull up to a driveway, run into the house and come out with two toddlers. She opened the doors to her SUV for them, they got in, and then she got in and drove off. I could see the girls sitting in their car seats, but it did not look like they had buckled themselves in, and their mother certainly hadn't done it. Then just a couple days later I saw another mother pull up in front of our apartment and one of her children was standing directly behind the driver's seat while the other was turned so far around that there was no way she could have been buckled.

Both these events left me pretty shocked. I had seen people people buckle their children into their seats in a variety of unsafe ways, but I had never seen children using the car seats without any sort of restraint. It is one thing to not care about one's own safety, but to so jeopardize the safety of one's child in a way that is so preventable is appalling.

When I asked a friend how she strapped her swaddled baby into the car seat, she said that she only used the shoulder straps because they only lived a couple miles away. She didn't care that more than fifty percent of accidents happen within five miles of home. Another person told me that her child's seat tipped over occasionally when she made a turn. I am not what some call a "car seat Nazi" but I do think that taking a few minutes to properly buckle one's children in is the only thing a responsible parent can do.