Neighbours' baby not in a car seat

[shelleybee]

Posting for traffic really.
I don't know what to do. As I left the house just now, my next door neighbours were also going out. They had their 7 month old daughter with them. He got into the car's driver's seat and she got into the passenger seat with the baby on her lap. They then drove off like that.
I have seen them do the same once before. OH says he has also seen them do it before.
My dilemma is this: they are Polish and speak very little English. If their English was better, I'd have no qualms with pointing out how dangerous this is, but I've lived next to them for 11 months now and their English seems limited to 'hello'.
What should I do?

If they are Polish chances are at least one speaks reasonable English, any Polish I know speak English pretty well but would probably speak their own language amongst themselves.
I go with trying to have a word, maybe saying the local police are having a crackdown on children not in car seats in your area and you don't want them to get stopped and fined.
Health visitor /police a bit much before you try to talk to them. Laws are different in Eastern Europe so they might not be aware.

HistoryMad I'm hoping you're just being goady and lying. If not you're utterly ridiculous and very lucky your poor baby wasn't injured or killed.

Well, I second the OP buying the neighbours a car seat. Also a suitable car to put it in and maybe a second car just in case. You cannot be too careful.

Don't report them! Explain that they have to use the car seat properly - with mime if necessary. Having said that, I see this everyday with my neighbours and other school mums and have given up trying to get anyone to change their mind.

One emergency stop ( quite likely on our crowded roads) and the baby may well die, either from being smashed into or through the windscreen or from being crushed by the mother if she has tucked it into the seatbelt.

Adults make these choices. Baby does not. Call the cops.

Oh yes, the airbag could break its neck too.

I've called the police before about this. They take it very seriously and do show up to speak to the parents.

The school office told me to ring 101 when I raised a concern that some grandparents were driving away from school drop off with a toddler on the knee in the front passenger seat.

The next week I saw them, I asked them pleasantly if they had a car seat for the toddler. I didn't see them doing drop off after that day.

FGSholdthedoor
It’s not just foreign parents or gps. My mother was most put out when dh and I refused to do the 15 min drive home from the city centre with me sitting in the front breastfeeding dd when she was ebf. I just did a little feed to get us home as we’d been out longer than planned and my mother and her dh knew dd would need a feed at that time. She bitched and winged about how ridiculous all the car seat laws are on countless occasions. She never drove dd without a seat though.

Shelley
I’m glad you care about their baby. Contacting the hv is a great idea.

Silver I think that's a nice idea but it's not really going far enough.

A car seat, a car and a spare car might come across as a bit PA. OP should also buy them a four bedroom detached house to go with the car seat, car and spare car.

GameOldBirdz

I would talk to them first. You could give them a print out of the information on gov.uk and a picture of a suitable car seat if you really think their English is poor, they will get the gist.

What are people thinking when they do this? How can they be so weirdly confident it'll be fine, when traffic accidents are so, so common? Amazing.

Phone the police.
I would do the same with some one drink driving, they are both putting life at risk.

Take argos/halfords catalogue or similar and show them the page of car seats. It should be clear especially if you say 'I'm worried you'll get into trouble with the police'. So making it more 'it's the law here' than 'you're awful parents'.

I wouldn't speak to them first because they won't change their behaviour on your day so and then when the health visitor turns up they'll know it was you. Could make things uncomfortable.

Just tell hv.

I would call Children Services or the police. If you try to speak to your neighbour, you don't know how they will respond and to be honest, they're more likely to listen to the police than they are to listen to you.

I don't think you need to talk to them, the first contact with the hv or police will be polite but firm information giving and is likely to have more impact than the next door neighbour saying something. It is unlikely that they won't have noticed that everyone else uses a car seat so they have made a desicion not to bother. We were not allowed to leave hospital with other DC until we had shown staff the car seats we were using.

Why don't you just go and speak to them op? Try google translate. They possibly don't know it's illegal, car seats are uncommon in lots of countries, my DH had never actually seen one until our DD was born.

We have a large Eastern European population round here. If the people don't speak much English, we also have many many translation companies which the police/HV/hospital etc have access to.
So I would go with speaking to their HV (assuming you could get hold of them?) as they'll be able to access this.

Car seats are mandatory in Poland as well

Do they have a car seat and just not using it?

I have 2 old car seats i need to get rid of, a maxi cosi a year old. I'd happily send it to you.

Health visitor would be my first choice, if I knew a health visitor to speak to.

Second would be 101

You're all bat-shit crazy. For decades cars did not have seat belts in the back seat, let alone car seats. Almost no-one died. And that's with every single journey in a whole childhood being made that way, not just a few when tiny.

To call something "dangerous" when 99.9% of people suffer zero adverse consequences as a result of doing it thousands of times is an abuse of English.

I've just googled some statistics that compare 1950 with 2005. The death rate per accident has roughly halved. In 1950, for every 100,000 accidents where a baby was in a car, 8.6 children died. (In 2005 it was 3.6.)

100,000/8.6 = about 12 thousand. So with average luck you would have to be in 12 thousand accidents with an unrestrained baby before the baby would be killed.

(TBH, these figures seem extreme even to me. If someone has better figures, I'd be interested to see them.)