To not want to take young children in a taxi?

[Piewife]

We're planning a short break and will need to travel by train. Our two DCs will be aged 4 and 10 months. DH has said we should get a taxi to the train station (about a 10 minute drive) but I really don't feel comfortable with the children being in a taxi without their car seats, particularly the baby as too young to even wear a seatbelt.

Taking the baby in his infant seat isn't an option as too heavy and almost outgrown now.

There's nowhere decent to park at the station and I wouldn't want to leave my car unattended there for a few days anyway.

Any ideas or experience??

@Fairylea You’re almost as likely to have a crash on the train as in a 10 min taxi journey.

Errr.... I don't think so. How many car crashes will there be today, even on short journeys. Compare that to how many train crashes there will be today.

About 6 people die a day in motoring accidents, and many more are injured. Most days no one is killed or injured in a train crash.

DH drops you and kids and luggage at station then drives back then waljs/bus/taxis back there himself? Personally I'd just go for the taxi and ask for a child seat if possible.

YABU if you don't want to take a taxi but don't want to leave your car at the station either.

Walking would have been the obvious solution to me. I assume they're taking a pushchair for when they get there so it's not as if there's no means of getting the children to the station on foot.

Dh (or you) takes you all to station with luggage then follows by taxi/walk,

Walking would have been the obvious solution to me. I assume they're taking a pushchair for when they get there so it's not as if there's no means of getting the children to the station on foot.

A ten minute drive here will take me 5/6 miles from home. Most people's obvious solution won't be a 5 mile walk at the start of their holiday!

About 6 people die a day in motoring accidents, and many more are injured.

This is fascinating reading: assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/448037/road-fatalities-2013-data.pdf

I've not been able to find a more recent version.

What are the chances of being killed or was seriously injured in a daytime taxi accident in a city? Taxis are safer than private cars, I believe. Urban roads are safer, for occupants of cars, than rural roads (page 6 of the citation). Fatalities are wildly more likely at night than during the day (page 7): adjusted for volumes of traffic, about eight times more people die between midnight and 1am than between 10am and 11am.

Just pre-book a taxi with car seats. Or ask the taxi co to store your seat while you are away.

Or you all drive to the station then one adult stays with kids in a cafe whilst the other one drives car back home and gets taxi back again?

This. Or bus. I won't take kids in cars without appropriate seats either, legal or not.

For a ten minute journey with two adults the two stage trip where driver drop offs one parent with children and returns by taxi is the obvious solution.
If that wasn’t possible then if your local area has black cabs available you can wheel a baby strapped into its pushchair into a black cab, put the brakes on and then put the 4 year old onto the well-designed integral booster seat in the back.

Busses are surely as dangerous as a 10 min city center car journey?

CripsSandwiches. DH drops you and kids and luggage at station then drives back then waljs/bus/taxis back there himself? Personally I'd just go for the taxi and ask for a child seat if possible

Well, go ahead and point out the obvious then!

🤣 obviously that’s the best solution.

You are happy to lug the kids on publictransport on holiday but freaking about a 10 minute taxi journey ? ARe you taking a pram get an accesible taxi and just push the pram and baby into the taxi

Buses aren’t as dangerous as taxis without seatbelts because they hardly ever come to screeching high speed halts. Both are less likely to get you killed than walking.

Busses are surely as dangerous as a 10 min city center car journey?

No, buses are still probably safer per mile: lower speeds, a lot more metal, a lot easier to see.

But the risks in both cases are so small that they are hard to reason about.

The main issue is that it makes no sense to compare bus casualty rates with car casualty rates unless you deal with the fact that some times of day not, presumably, the times of day the OP will be going to the station are ten times more dangerous in cars. The correct comparator is not the average fatality rate per mile for cars, but the fatality/injury rate for cars at the time of day the OP is travelling and the fatality/injury rate for buses at the time of day the OP is travelling. Both will be so close to zero as to be impossible to make sound distinctions.

Can't take seats with us as it's a city break and no way we can lug them around on public transport.

I don't understand the reasoning that it is safe to take 2 small dc on a City Break, on and off public transport, but not travel 10 mins in a taxi.
There is a risk in everything you do - including sitting very still in your own home, but the risk assessment you have here is a bit off, IMO.

One thing to take into consideration OP and I can only think of the firm I used to work for so realise not everywhere is the same but a lot of taxi drivers do 1000's of miles a week and are pretty good at judging situations in the 10 years I worked for them there was only 1 accident and that was in an empty taxi that someone drove into the back of, although anecdote never trumps data

You get the bus with kids. Baby can stay in the pushchair. I see families of 3 on the buses all the time and dh can get a taxi with the luggage

There is a risk in everything you do - including sitting very still in your own home, but the risk assessment you have here is a bit off

Risk assessments around transport are crazy. Look at the people who regularly arrive on MN to say they won't let their children travel on coaches or trains because car seats are so vital.

My transport rules are simple: wear a seat belt or appropriate restraint in a car, avoid cars in favour of any public transport whenever possible, prefer planes to trains but don't sweat it, and don't travel in helicopters under any circumstances unless it's the air-sea rescue saving you from imminent death.

Very true Reluctant. See also the people who advise you to walk for half an hour rather than drive for five minutes with a six year old using a slightly sub-optimal booster cushion. The former may be a valuable investment in long term cardiovascular health but it is also significantly more likely to leave you dead by the end of the journey (by which I mean it’s at least twice as likely to kill you, but that’s still an absolutely minuscule risk).

It's around 4 miles to the train station, across in the next town. No way we're walking that at the start of our journey!

As far as I'm aware, buses and trains are less likely to crash than cars therefore lower risk than being in a taxi not properly restrained. That's why I'm not so worried about taking them on public transport. Having said that, we'll be walking where possible when there.

I'll have a look at bus routes to the station actually, don't know why I didn't think of that!! Thanks.

Op seriously make your life easy. The odds of something going wrong on such a short trip is fairly remote.