Unrestrained children - shame on parents!

Altreab

Gwynston wrote:

Good points being made about the danger unrestrained passengers pose to the rest of us. Like that ad showing those unbelted young adults flying about in slow mo with heads banging off each other :eek: Very graphic - I hope the message got through.... (think it might have been a Norn Iron ad showing on UTV?)

A few years ago when we lived in England there was a similar campaign. It depicted a mother collecting her teenage son, who gets into the back seat without putting on a belt. Down the road, a van pulls out right in front and they can't avoid crashing into it! The lad is shown flying in slow mo into the back of mum's head, and bouncing back into his seat covered in blood. The voiceover calmly said, "After killing his mother, Billy sat back down..." while the daughter in the other front seat is freaking out at the site of her dead mum. The chilling message was that Billy wasn't badly hurt, but mum who was safely buckled up, survived the vehicle impact, but not her son's....

It certainly made my wife take notice. When we moved over here and members of her family routinely got into the back of her car without belting up, she would refuse to drive off until they did so. On more than one occasion, someone got rather miffed to be told how to look after their own safety, until she recalled that ad and plainly told them that she wasn't going to drive them anywhere so long as there was a chance they would kill her through not wearing their belt in the back....

It was interesting the effect that had ....a friend who is a taxi driver commented that a LOT of people started belting up in the back seats after they started showing that ad.

Lpfsox

Have just seen one of the local scumbags driving away with her 5 kids unbelted in the back seat. Afaik the ages of the kids are something like 8, 6, 4, 3 and a new baby (baby in a car seat, but that wasn't secured by a seat belt).

The same kids run wild on the roads when they're here (visiting grandparents) and it's just sheer good luck they haven't been hit by a car yet. One of them has been seen to get underneath parked cars and just lie on the ground - again sheer luck he hasn't been injured yet.

Accident waiting to happen and when it does she'll be all over the papers condemning the poor sod who happens to be the other party to the accident.

Some people just shouldn't have kids.

Guy:Incognito

I was behind a 306 on the way home with a woman in the back holding a child. I'm actually seeing it more and more often these days.

Gwynston

Lpfsox wrote:

baby in a car seat

I was going to comment that this just proves my point about their irresponsibility by restraining the baby, but once they grow out of the car seat, it's OK to leave kids unbelted... :rolleyes:

But then, the next bit said this:

but that wasn't secured by a seat belt

:eek: That's just scandalous....!

Some people just shouldn't have kids.

Like I said though, it's not just the scumbags - it's well-off people driving around in 50-grand 4x4s who really ought to know better....

lisnsooz

OMG - I completely agree and it makes my blood BOIL! I was driving home from work a couple weeks ago through Sandyford Ind Est and was behind a lovely '06 Renault Megane coupe, the whole way through the estate, down Sandyford Rd and into Dundrum.

Child (about 4-5 girl) in back waving a ragdoll at me. Kept turning around in the seat to look out at me, etc etc. Basically - floating around in the back of.. a COUPE!!!! What a moronic idiot that guy was (and there was a woman in the passenger seat). Clearly - even if the child had the seat belt on, it wasn't enough to restrain - shoulda been in some better retraints. And anyway - when I passed them out to take a turn, I stopped and looked into the back seat, and she wasn't in a seat belt - in fact was lying across the back seat at that stage. Oh - and did I mention he was doing 60Km + on the Sandyford Rd (50km limit - and it's busy with lots on-to-the-road exits)?

Do these ppl not realise that if they break hard and the child is elevated on the back seat enough, they could potentially knock down their own child if the kid goes over the windscreen and lands on the road under the car? FOOLS!!

Plus - I saw a woman once with enough 'toddler on board' etc stickers to wallpaper a small room, yet she had three children floating around the back seat :eek: Don't worry about the other drivers missus - worry about what'll happen if you have to break if a pedestrian/animal runs in front of you and you have three kids stuck in the front window next to you....

Idiots. :mad: