Decision taken from me about dangerous driving

[Iwishicouldflyhigh]

I know how I feel, so I know that’s not unreasonable, but interested in other views.

DD2 was invited to a party and me and a friend agreed to lift share (we take, they bring back).

on the morning she messaged to say party girl’s friend offered to bring them from venue to their house so easier fir friend to pick up from there. No problem.

that night dd2 told me they were 4 in back of ca with only 3 seats. I’m really against this and dd2 knows that so she said she had to have a seatbelt and then 2 shared another seatbelt.

im so angry that this decision was made without checking with me, id never agree to it and would have gone to get her.

there is a reason its illegal.

i suppose I would just never do it and can’t understand how others think it’s ok.

dd2 is 12, no phone and was in a hard position.

in hindsight, I should have checked that there were enough seats (especially as I know my friend has form for doing the same), but it was a last minute change and I didn’t realise that I should even check (I assume people follow the law). Lesson learnt.

how do others feel? Am I particularly uptight (not that I would change my stance).

There are two interpretations. I see that statement as being that the similarity is really nothing. Not the over capacity.

Well we will have to agree to disagree then.

Over capacity issues start with over capacity, the risk of accidents increase with the amount of over capacity, but nevertheless over capacity is not allowed for safety reasons.

Yanbu.
If she insisted on having a seat belt to herself, it sounds as if your dd was more sensible than the adult. Not sure what 12 year old me would have done in that situation.

I thought if the others in the car were minors it was the responsibility of the driver to ensure they were belted correctly.

It would definitely be the responsibility of the driver not to drive with more occupants that the car is legally allowed to carry. She would also have invalidated her insurance. In an accident my guess is the insurance company would pay out to third party claims, but not for any damage to to the car, or personal injury for the driver.

Shame she didn't get stopped by the police. I don't think they would have been impressed. They wouldn't have let her continue so may have called you to collect her.

Car insurance is invalidated if the number of passengers is greater than the number of seats. So if your daughter were involved in an accident, the driver would not be insured if anything happened to her.

You are right to object and to protect your child.

It actually drives me mental when people do this sort of thing. Change plans after agreement and put you in a position where it’s then hard to say no.

i have a friend who did this exact same thing, although I didn’t find out for a couple of weeks (11 year old didn’t think to mention it). The risk was relatively low given the roads involved but I was annoyed anyway. We used to lift share all the time but now I just make excuses and say we’ll sort ourselves (I’m not usually arsed about lift sharing anyway - I prefer to drop off and pick up my own kids so I know all is well).

I wouldn't mind this, if it was a short drive in a safe area- I guess I think the odds of anything bad happening are vanishingly low. I am putting my view on here because it's the kind of thing that people like me often keep quiet about because it is so shocking to so many people, not to mention illegal.

I am old and grew up in a different era, as did my kids...
Still, I wouldn't drive another person's child without proper seatbelt, etc, unless the parent and the child were both explicitly fine with it.

This is not ok. I have a friend i dont trust taking my kids as she is unsafe in a car. Not as in her driving but as in her seat situation. She has turned up at my house on more then one occasion with 6 kids in a car that only sits 5 people and she has no safety for her 3yr old son who takes his arms out of his straps. Iv stressed and stressed my opinions and she always has excuses. So my kids don't stay at her house and if we go anywhere together we take my car. I have a 14 seater bus.

Mind-bogglingly stupid attitude.

Well this is obviously what I said 😂

I literally can’t believe anyone is pretending they thought otherwise.

I’m not pretending anything, that comment and a couple of others (although one can’t be found now, as one of your posts have justifiably been deleted), were very poor taste.

Or are you saying they were also badly worded?

Not sure why you added the laughing emoji, again poor taste in my opinion.

A child in the boot?!??

OP you are not wrong- totally agree

Some people think their "good" driving makes them invincible.... so an accident will never happen to them. But accidents can happen to anyone, any time, any where. Its luck rather than judgement from the driver in the OP that means there wasn't an accident.

Everyone thinks it won’t happen to them, until it does.

Can you tell me what a “safe area” is in terms of driving? I don’t believe such a place exists?

Well you’re wrong on all counts, but now you know what that comment did mean.

Well sure, but the vanishingly low probability is a car accident with no insurance and a legal problem - plus the potential injuries to all the passengers in the car due to an improperly restrained passenger. So the risk/benefit isn't in its favour as clearly this child had a parent who could have just come to get her so it wasn't an emergency or a necessity or some other reason that it would make sense to consider a stupid risk.

It also teaches children that cheating is fine if there's some sort of justification. And the justification here is 'I planned poorly and no one remembered how to use a phone' which is ridiculous.

I 'once' had my kids in a taxi without a carseat. Our flight was delayed 7 hours and we landed at home at 1am, after the public transport options. The airline lost our carseats and had run out of replacements (they have a couple they lend out for this sort of thing apparently but not this night). We phoned 3 friends who (fairly) didn't answer and then got a taxi home. I actually am not even sure it was worth the amount of stress that gave me - we really couldn't figure out another option outside just sleeping at the airport, and it still felt like a stupid risk to take.

I actually think the consequences of living a life with this level of worry, and with the need for the highest degree of safety and control are also dangerous, though not easily quantifiable. That is why my boundaries around things like car seats and when it is ok to leave kids alone for a few minutes are not in line with UK 2025 beliefs, and occasionally law.

I agree that teaching children that cheating is ok is a terrible idea, but I am not sure that this is an example of cheating. I think children need to understand that things are seldom black and white, that crossing the street against the light if there are no cars in sight is ok, whereas crossing then the light is green without checking for cars is not.

I am 60 and have lived in a lot of places and a lot of circumstances.

I’m not wrong on all counts because you decide so, I’m not wrong that you’ve had a post justifiably deleted, I’m not wrong that your posts were at best unclear and a t worst exactly how I and others interpreted them. I’m not wrong that it’s poor taste to use the laughing emoji around the death of children.

My thoughts and that of others, are how we view you, that’s not wrong.

When my son was about 11 he went to a party about 20 miles away - 4 kids in each car with the mum and her sister driving. The next day it came up in conversation that the two women had decided to race each other home so had been overtaking in stupid places, speeding etc.

I dread to think what might have happened. How can people be so stupid and reckless when they've got other people's kids in their cars?

I can’t even remember what the deleted post was, I think it was just asking the person to stop googling articles about a traumatic incident they knew nothing about.

I am TELLING you that the post was suggesting one extra child in a car is nothing like the incident which a poster immediately jumped in and compared it to. I am sure there are many other crashes that involve unbelted extra children that it may be comparable to.

I don’t know why you’re harassing me and if you look back at my posts you will see absolutely no defence of unsafe driving so I have no idea why you are determined suggest I am doing so unless in bad faith.

You’re actually making me pretty upset (along with the other poster frantically googling the Oxford Mail like it’s some kind of win), as my post was about working on the crash aftermath and that is not something you can decide is in poor taste.

I'm pretty happy to have my line be 'is it illegal' as it's just not worth taking any sort of risk of being separated from my kids.

My kids walk themselves the mile to school and stay home alone and eat grapes and climb trees way higher than I can reach and eat junk food and take aerial classes and do plenty of things that teach them how to assess risk without it taking over their lives... but if something is illegal that's enough for me.

Anyone remember the TV advert "Julie knew her killer?"

As with all things, context is important. Where I live, we are pretty quiet. If I chose to drive down my lane to the scout hut half a mile away with a kid not strapped in 99 times out of a hundred we wouldn't pass another car. Same can't be said for the situation in the OP's case, of 20 miles on dial carriageways. That is just bonkers.