that a mother has put my dc at risk, and not to say anything about it.

[poppincandy]

My dd (13) was invited to a birthday party, but I was unable to take her as I was at work. Therefore dd declined the invitation.

When she told her friend why she couldn't go, the mother of the girl who's party it was, offered to take her. This is not someone I know, but as a school friend, I was happy for her to go.

Fast forward to day of the party dd went with this girl and realised a number of the others were also getting a lift with the girl and her mum, 9 girls and the mum in a Zafira. One girl was to go in the front, 4 in the middle and 4 in the back. Now my dd said that she'd better not go, as I wouldn't like her travelling like that - the girl's mother basically coerced her and said oh it's fine don't worry about it, and unfortunately she gave into peer pressure, and travelled approximately 5 miles to the party like this.

Now dd is right and if I had known this was the travelling arrangements there would be no way I'd of allowed her to travel to the party like that, even if it meant she did not attend the party.

Now I want to contact the mother and tell her I'm not happy at all, but dd has asked not to embarrass her further, and won't accept a lift with this mother again, dh has said just don't let her drive dd any where again.

AIBU to be cross at this, would you allow your dd to travel to the party? Do I keep quiet now and just not allow this mother to give my dd a lift ever again?

Because the driver knows already it is a bloody stupid thing to do, how could she not?

All bringing it up with her is going to do is cause friction her OP's DD at school.

SGB, I'm sure a lot of people remember sitting in cars as kids without seatbealts (I do) - but take a look at this...

Death rates on UK roads

FFS what a bunch of wusses, paranoics and grasses people are turning into.

There's a photograph, that I can't put my hand to, of the young (six-ish) Damon Hill in the back of a car with his father Graham driving. The car has been fitted with a four-point seatbelt for the children in the back seat. Hill senior understood the laws of physics. As someone's posted already, deathrates on the UK road have halved in the face of a ten-fold or more increase in the number of vehicles, and seatbelts are a huge part of that. To drive an overloaded vehicle with unrestrained children should be completely socially unacceptable. I would have no qualms about a serious discussion with a mother who did that with my children.

I wouldn't say anything because your DD is ok and she'll never get a lift with that women again so no good is going to come of it and its much more important to keep your DD's trust.

I would say to your DD that you will not say but if that ever happens again with any other person she should not get in and she should try and call you etc.

I have a zafira. I can see that it would be easy to fit 4 kids in the middle row (you can even get special seat belt that could legally accomodate this) but the thought of 4 kids (even little ones let alone 13 YOS in the back (only 2 child size seats) is nothing short of scary.

Yeah, dude. Seatbelts are so heteronormatively mundane.

Idiot.

Op i would not be happy if my child was put in this position & agree that your dd sounds very mature .Thankfully on this occasion nothing happened but that was down to pure luck imo.

I'd rather be a wuss, paranoic or grass than the mother of a dead child.

Maybe the easiest way round it is to wait until she is invited again and you say no then and why.

Not so long ago a mum carried more children than allowed in her car and crashed, several died.

wuss, paranoic or grass....
hmmm
I come from a country that has no seat belts, no traffic laws and is the car crash death capital of the world.
I luuurvvv seatbelts. When I bought my first car it was a swanky new thing with a seat belt. I was the only one in my whole town to wear a seat belt. Everyone pointed and laughed.

I do not care. I think they are the simplest and most elegant safety solution of them all and am proud to wear one. Whenever I go back to my home country I always make sure my kids have them on (as I do here). Mostly they are not the lovely ones you have here that tense up but still, better than nothing. It makes all the drivers swear at me because they have to take off the fancy seat covers and dig out the seat belts but hey ho....

Your DD sounds really mature.

If it was me I wouldn't say anything but would not want DD travelling with her again, but I don't really like confrontation. I would have been v annoyed though.

People are wusses because they want to protect their children? What a stupid thing to say.

I worked in an industry in which we used to receive wrecked cars with bits of people still splattered in the interior,bits of children too Brain tissue,blood etc.

The majority of those weren't wearing their seatbelts.We know because we got the accident reports from the insurance companies and police.

Insisting that one's child wears a seat belt isn't being a wuss,it's called having common sense and not wanting to see your child being splattered all over the windscreen,or land in the road in a bloody heap.

You may have survived such trips but many did not,including my uncle whom I never got to meet,who died at 17 because he wasn't wearing a seatbelt.

As for grasses better the parents have to report to the police than report to the undertaker to arrange their child's funeral.

If someone offered to transport my ds I would assume they intended to transport them safely. The fact that did not happen in this case would make me call the mother and question why she thought it was safe to transport in that way. If I knew some of the other parents whose children were also in that car I would make a point of talking to them too so they were aware of this mother's different attitude to saftey.

SGB just because things were different in our day (I think you are a similar age to me) doesn't make it okay to do the same today.

I wouldn't upset my daughter by ringing to complain. This is what I do: next time she is offered a lift by an acquaintance, whose driving behaviours you do not know, call in advance to say thank you and ask politely if there are enough seatbelts for all passengers. If the person is like you or me he/she won't mind and if they sound surprised I tell them in a slightly apologetic tone that I am a worry wart about those kinds of things and it's a rule we have. It's never been a problem.

In OP's situation I would have a chat with dd about it and if she agrees then would talk to the mum. But I would be itching to talk to the mum.

A lot of my friends are very casual about seatbelts and regularly have their dc's in their laps. I have had countless discussions with them - they do not change (no doubt you would approve of them SGB ) but they all know to count the car seats and seat belts available if my kids are involved.
I am so used to it that if anyone offers dc's a lift, the first thing I ask is about car seats, seat belts etc.

i had a similar issue not so long ago with a good friend bringing my son home strapped into front seat of her car with another boy (neither of them big enough to be travelling in the front with airbags at all, let alone 2 of them in 1 seat)... i wouldn't let him travel with her again...

hillee i read your post as bil had squashed 11 people like hedgehogs ie run them over .

i see plenty of people who wear seatbelts in the front but leave their children unrestrained in the back. do not understand why police don't stop them.

I hate the fact that she coerced your DD into joining them. Well done to your DD for having the guts to express her reservations. at the mum for disregarding her concerns. I hate people like this.

Can't you talk to your DD about how you're worried that she might do it again and that someone could get hurt or killed and that you talking to the mum might prevent that?

"neither of them big enough to be travelling in the front with airbags at all"

The research of that is a bit sketchy, though. US cars are fitted with larger airbags because seat belt wearing is not compulsory, and they deploy harder to do the job not merely of keeping your head away from the dashboard, but to restrain you into your seat. European airbags assume you're wearing a seatbelt and are just about head protection, and in many cases are choreographed to deploy in sequences with the pyrotechnic pre-tensioners on the seatbelts: seatbelt pulls you back and down, airbag fires to protect your head and thorax, hopefully both before the front crumple zone is used up. Airbags are probably a bad idea with rear-facing childseats, but for the sort where the strap runs around behind the child's back, the pre-tensioner is a bigger issue.

The real issue with airbags is people with short legs, usually women, driving with their body close to the steering wheel because they have the driver's seat at the front of the travel. It's an open question, although I haven't read the research in a few years, as to if the airbag's benefit (keeping the head away from steering wheel) outweighs the risk associated with the initial deployment (they're close enough that some of the debris from the steering wheel and probably the bag itself will be going fairly quickly). Airbags are clearly a very good thing if you're a more standard size, but the research on what happens to people who are short isn't very extensive because they only account for a small proportion of accidents.

For children, if a child is sat with the seat in a reasonable position, the airbag will deploy in the same way as it will for an adult. A bigger issue will be that their neck will be badly placed relative to the diagonal strap, which might make the pre-tensioner hit them a bit hard. I'd worry much more about my child being sat on an appropriate booster seat that lifts them into the correct position relative to the belt than whether they were in the front or back of the car. Three-point belts are a horrible compromise between effectiveness and practicality, and if I were a shade more paranoid I'd have my car fitted with four point harnesses in the rear for my children, rather than relying on the three-point belts that are fitted. You can't practically fit four point harnesses in the front.

Excellent post - v interesting, t.

It's great that your daughter was mature enough to recognise a problem and that it was a big enough of a problem to want to not go to the party as a result of it.

It's really worrying that the mother talked her into it - completely the mother at fault and not your daughter.

Is there anything you could do between you to work out a strategy so that if something like this should ever happen again, that she is able to cope with it?

I don't know if she carries a mobile and so could ring you at work (maybe with a code word so that if she rings up and says 'Hi Mother' rather than 'Hi Mum' you know that something's up) or at least carries your/dh/other responsible adult's contact numbers with her if she doesn't.

Or if that doesn't work, that she would be able to say that categorically, her mum has said that (taking this scenario) she is not allowed to travel in a car without a seatbelt (or whatever the issue is) and therefore she won't, thank you very much but no. And that even if you haven't explicitly discussed this (who does these days when it is taken so much for granted by the majority!) that it's technically a white lie but that you would back her all the way.

It sounds like she is a responsible kid who isn't going to abuse this but have it as a tool to ensure both of you are happy that she is able to stand her ground when she knows she is in the right and doing what you would want...

Maybe you don't want to approach the mum directly but could you maybe approach the local police safety officer and the school and get them to run a session at the school, preferably with leaflets, so that the daughter and other kids in the class will know that it is dangerous, not acceptable, potentially lethal and illegal etc.

Seatbelts are just for those who are incapable of thinking outside of the dominant social orthodoxy, bloody NORMALS.

An acquaintance of mine is in a care home, completely unable to move, communicating with his eyes because he was in a car accident without his seat belt on. The driver recovered. Wussy paranoiac that he is.