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?

"I'm saying you can't draw such specific conclusions about the safety of individual situations from vague data."

Except this isn't just fishing around in the data playing with factor analysis. You're right in general: just because you see a correlation between two variables that doesn't say anything about causation, and the more pairs of variables you compare the more likely you are to find a spurious link.

However, this isn't just epidemiology, where you observe outcomes and then attempt to discern the cause retrospectively. There are clear, direct ways in which we can demonstrate that in any given accident you are better off restrained. It's not "oh, loads of stuff changed, the death rate drops, who knows?", you can perform direct measurements in any number of test cells and show why better designed restraints reduce the deceleration as measured at both the head and the chest, and direct examination of corpses shows why that's a good thing. When you can demonstrate mechanisms which clearly model real-world scenarios, it's not just "vague data".

And every Sunday at 2pm there's a real, rolling test lab for our understanding of accident dynamics. People who do this stuff seriously are still picking over Mauricio Gugilmin's 2001 accident contains large impacts because it was fully instrumented and shows what's survivable, and Kubica's accident in 2007 here and analysed here provides ample opportunity to understand how restraints work under severe load. Waving your hands and calling the data vague doesn't help: there's endless evidence of the safety benefits of being securely restrained within a secure cell with external energy absorbing zones.

Oh I agree. Seatbelts ( for example) definately save lives when there are accidents. There is plenty of evidence for this love the seatbelt.

But we also know that for example we have less road traffic accidents. From which we can assume that amogst car improvements road and driver safety has improved, which includes driver ability to assess and manage risk.

When a person decides to put too many children in a car so they are not seated correctly they take a risk that the seatbelts and car design wouldn't function correctly and balance it against the fact that they're very very unlikely to have an accident.

Is the total risk high enough to justify all this fearmongering? And the negative messages we're sending our children about danger? I don't believe so. Obviously others disagree!!

OP - YANBU

It is not up to your DD to dictate how you proceed with this. She is only 13. Tell your DD that you could be contacting the police - but that you will not do this unless it happens again.

Contact the mother, the school and all the other parents. No need to explain all the science etc or the coercion - just stick to the facts.

EG to the drive - I am shocked and extremely upset that you put my DD at risk. If I find out you have done this again I will report you to the police.

To the school and the other parents: I thought you should be aware of this. Leave it to them as to what to do.

To your DD - I can going to go against the flow here and say she needs to learn to stick up for herself more. It is a lesson to all of us parents to explain to our DCs that they must not travel without a seat or a seatbelt (unless their life was in peril - I don't know driving away from a fire/flood/insert other unlikely scenario). Your DD needs to learn that the safety of others comes before her embarrassment.

Can I also remind all of you of the necessity of adults wearing seatbelts in the back of your cars. Not just the law but to protect you the driver.

This is something which I have had to insist with friends/colleagues etc. They laugh and say "are you a bad driver ha ha" and I say - "if something goes into the back of us I do not want you to kill me thanks".

Please makre sure you and your other halves and your DCs (once they can drive) ensure all their passengers are using their seatbelts.

"But we also know that for example we have less road traffic accidents"

There are reasons to hope that would be true: better enforcement of speed limits, better enforcement of (and adherence to) drink-driving laws, ABS. But because non-injury accidents aren't reportable, I'm not aware of a solid data set that shows there has been a reduction in the number of accidents. There has been a reduction in injury accidents. But as to whether that's fewer impacts or the same number of impacts leading to fewer injuries, I don't know, but it isn't my field: do you have a reference?

"Is the total risk high enough to justify all this fearmongering? And the negative messages we're sending our children about danger? I don't believe so. Obviously others disagree!!"

I'm a "if duffers best drowned, if not duffers won't drown" parent, and my kids have engaged in all sorts of high-risk activity (cliff climbing with minimal protection, for example). I'm perfectly happy to do the debate about cycle helmets, and usually cycle myself in a wooly hat or a cap, and have done motorbikes in my past.

But car accidents are a really senseless way to die, there's no countervailing pleasure to sitting without a seatbelt, and the risk mitigation and reduction doesn't seem to have a downside. Passengers being restrained in cars isn't a debatable safety improvement like bike helmets, and it doesn't really seem plausible to suggest risk homeostasis as an issue unless we really believe that parents treat their children being restrained as an excuse to take more risks. SO although I'm the first to ignore worries about paedophiles, cycling and walking home from school, because in each case the fear culture is dubious and the risk reduction comes with a cost, in the case of wearing seatbelts I don't see any of that.

How many adults now drive without a seatbelt? Even the yobbos smoking in a knackered Rover 214 I walked past yesterday had seatbelts on. So why would you deny that safety to your children?

I would assume that four pre-teens in a car were wearing belts, just that two of them were sharing.

Re reference I got from the NatOffOfStats last time I had a chat like this! But I'm on iPod and it doesn't like the site,sorry. If I'm wrong that's embarrassing lol. Easy to find though. It doesn't mentioned unreported accidents which you're right about, but again aren't really relative in terms of danger.

In terms of negatives to me it's the mummy knows best attitude that is damaging IMO. The dc originally didn't want to because her mum wouldn't want her to and then did because somebody else's mum insisted. Even when we're right obsessing so much about safety denies our children the ability to learn how to assess and decide for themselves. They would absolutely get it wrong sometimes, but they have learnt stuff in the process. ( and not - in a 5 mile journey died horrifically)

"It doesn't mentioned unreported accidents which you're right about, but again aren't really relative in terms of danger."

We don't know. It may well be that a load of what twenty years ago would have been injury accidents have been reduced to non-reportable non-injury accidents, but are still happening.

Yes that's possible, but it's another unquantifiable thing.

Are you an engineer by any chance? My DP is an engineer and I'm trained to analyse arguments. I drive him completely mad whenever we talk tech, because we come at things from different directions and pass each other in the middle, lol!

I an being a bit reactive anyway my job is about teaching kids risk management among other things (because it's a declining skill) and threads like this get up my back, because not one adult in the OP has really listened too or considered that the DC are completely capable of assessing or dealing with these things themselves.

I have a software degree that would probably be a B.Eng these days, but I've not fiddled with a piece of metal since Jim Callaghan was in Number 10. I'm now a post-grad researcher in computer security, which is mostly about risk economics.

I think that children are bad at assessing low-incidence/high-impact risks, because adults are and businesses are. Drawing up a residual risk statement for a large system and getting the board to sign it is instructive, because it reveals that people worry about high impact risks pretty well independent of their very low incidence, while ignoring lower impact risks pretty well independent of their higher incidence. Which is I guess your point: deaths in cars are rare so playing with the risks up and down isn't significant in the grand scheme of things, whereas to an engineer they're avoidable so should be avoided irrespective of cost (or opportunity cost: train safety is money wasted, as they're essentially infinitely safe and the money would be better spent on buying everyone a smoke alarm).

To return to the OP, the chances of being killed in a car in a given journey are vanishingly small (~1 in 1x10^7), and therefore doubling that risk is negligible. As a pattern of behaviour the risk isn't huge either, so if you never wore a seatbelt you'd be adding something like a 1 in 20000 risk per year. Hardly earthshattering, although that's a thousand or so bodies a year, and there's plenty of things that kill fewer than a thousand people a year that will get people seriously worried,

However, the risks of being injured in a given journey are several orders of magnitude higher, and that risk is neither negligible nor is the outcome ignorable. Seatbelts and other passive safety devices massively reduce injury, often to zero, and that could be the difference between your child spending six weeks in hospital and walking away, following a really quite mundane accident. I don't see any upside to loading a huge pile of kids into a people carrier (and, my prejudices showing, Zafira + seven kids is unlikely to be a basis for a demonstration of your perfect Roadcraft driving skills) to outweigh the risks involved.

But I'm always up for a debate on risk assessment, so I shall go away and cogitate the numbers you've caused me to calculate. 1x10^-7 per journey is very, very safe...

It's true - like I say, I want people to look at things for themselves more than I want to be right.

Ideal outcome, in my opinion is for DC to know enough to stick to their guns, whatever they decide (hopefully just taking 2 trips in the car which is a more logical solution than not going!)

Yeah, but for the right reasons, perhaps. Several people here have been attempting to argue that it's not a risk at all. What you're saying, and I think the numbers probably support, is that it's a small risk to be balanced against not walking home.

The problem with asking children to make this risk determination is that "although seat belts are a good idea it doesn't matter for five miles if it's the only way to get to the party" isn't a million miles from "although the driver being sober is a good idea it doesn't matter for five miles if it's the only way to get to the party" or "although the car not being stolen..." or "although the driver having a license...". I'm not sure the risk calculus that distinguishes between these scenarios is easy, nor appropriate for children to be asked to undertake. Getting them aged 13 to stick to needing a seatbelt is a good preparation for getting them aged 17 to stick to needing a taxi rather than getting into that Saxo driven by the bloke who's drunk five vodkas. Because that risk most certainly isn't 1x10^-7.

Oh definately! A lot of what I do is getting people to talk about things. En Masse even teenagers can be sensible, as long as they believe they're justified. It's just that when adults refuse to discuss with children why they make absolutes, or why they won't allow what they did, or other adults assume risk is okay without allowing for alternate non-risky solutions then that undermines the process. The other mum is definately the villan of the piece because when someonewas uncomfortable she didn't try to come up with another solution.

When I originally posted I wanted the people on this thread to stop reacting to the percieved risk and think about the actual.

Your job sounds very interesting btw. I know risk management has a bad reputation, but it's kind of fascinating when you get into it!

Wow, it's amazing looking at those stats. Since I was a kid they've dropped by over 2k deaths, and if you consider how many more cars there are on the road nowadays compared to then it just shows how high the death rates were - the roads really WERE that much quieter in the 80s.

Yes I remember playing in the boot of a Granada Estate, completely unrestrained. Sitting in the boot of a Toyota Corolla pretending to be a dog... all such fun but now it makes me cringe.

OP in your shoes I think would say something. I do understand though that your DD doesn't want you to. Mine are too small for this issue to arise at the moment so I really don't know how I would play it for sure...

Forget the child making a decision on risk of being in an accident, what about the higher risk that the police will stop them? It's not the children's fault if they do get stopped but they'd certainly be shaken by the experience.

Also, there's been a few times we've made emergency stops (I don't drive so I'm talking parents, partner etc driving) and I've been glad of my seat belt. I always think the more it hurt catching me the worse it would have been if it wasn't there. I've actually attended an accident and ran the scene (off duty voluntary ambulance) where someone wasn't wearing a belt. It wasn't a bad accident but he dented the windscreen and cut his head open. He was certainly the worst injury on the scene.

fishie - oops. clearly meant to say squashed eleven people into his car... not so much of the hedgehog action...

Everyone's going on about the seat belt issue, but it's the possible excess in weight that a car suspension may not be able to deal with, causing an accident.
I imagine that teens would not have made weight a problem, but it's crazy to forget about this fact.