What would you have done?

[Ghosty]

I just wanted a viewpoint about something I saw today and what I should have done about it, if anything ...
I was just coming home from taking DS to Kindergarten and was stopped at a redlight at a busy intersection. I was listening to my radio and looking around (as you do) when I noticed the car in the lane next to me ...
In it were three women - a driver, a front passenger, and a back passenger. They looked like grandmother (75ish), mother (50ish) and daughter (25ish)...
There was also a baby ... about 6 weeks old I guessed ... who was obviously much loved judging by the kisses she was getting by the oldest of the three ladies ...
The thing was that this baby was being held freely in the FRONT PASSENGER seat!!! Being cuddled and kissed and jiggled up and down etc.

I was gobsmacked ... I have seen young children in cars not strapped in before and been horrified, but I was incensed by this blatant disregard for the safety of a tiny baby.

I tried to attract there attention by waving and pointing and when one of the women saw me she ignored me. I was just about to get out of my car and go over to them when the lights changed and they drove away ... turning in a different direction to me ...

I have not been able to stop thinking about it all day ... going from wanting to follow them and try and find them to wanting to phone the police to just plain rage!

What would you have done if you had seen that? And what should I have done? I am feeling very guilty that I didn't do anything ...

I don't agree that the people who were playing with the baby in the front seat were deliberately putting their child's life in danger. They may well be stupid and thoughtless but that's not the same as a deliberate attempt to harm, surely? I'm not saying it's a good idea to do this, of course.

i hate it when i see a child climbing all over the back, my son is good and always sits in his seat, but my friend who has a son of 3 has a lot of trouble keeping him in the seat, he can take the seatbelt off, they do all they can to keep him in it, i do not believe that for one minute that those people were deliberatly putting their baby at risk, it was probably a case of a quick lift somewhere and no seat available. I must admit on a couple of ocassions when my ds was little, i had a lift somewhere (taxi) and held him on my lap. I am sure i am not the only one to have done this on the odd ocassion.

Me, breeze, I've done it. We strapped baby to our chests before we found out it's a good way to crush babe to death in an accident.

Ghosty, just a thought, unlikely but possible - if the baby was so young could the mum and baby have just come out of hospital? perhaps they had to stay in a few weeks after the birth, this was their homeward journey and they hadn't yet bought a car seat.

However, I find it really strange that the baby was being held in the front. Surely anyone would realise the danger of that alone?

I must admit when I've taken taxis I've sometimes had to hold onto my toddler or strap him into a big seat minus booster. I hate having to trust the taxi driver with our lives and try to avoid this situation if at all possible. If only taxis had child seats as a matter of course.

One of the things that the midwives told us in our antinatal classes was that we must have a car seat to take the child home. They went so far as to say that they would not let us leave the hospital with Dd until we could show that we were using a first size car seat, or could show that we were going home by bus. I'm not sure about the legality of this but they were quite adamant that this was the case.

Any parent not putting their child in the proper restraints, seatbelts or carseats in a car are automatically putting their child in danger. We are all aware of the accidents that can happen as a result of this being ignored so why take the chance?

When my dd was about 6 months she dislocated her shoulder and we had to get an ambulance to hospital. I was amazed that i just sat in the back with a lap belt on and held on to dd. I realise that it was an emergency but I was expecting better.

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Where we live probably half of the cars you see with kids in are not using child seats or seatbelts. What really kills me is when the parents are belted up, but the kids not ... so the parents are more important obviously. I really think it's tantamount to child abuse to put a child's wellbeing knowingly at risk in this way. But even if there were enough police, and they were to even try to address this problem, they'd all be far too busy to catch terrorists, so what can you do.

I've done it too, held a baby or toddler in the back. If you dont have a car and you are offered a lift and the alternative is the bus, then sometimes it is hard to resist. And cabs too, you just cant always take a baby seat with you wherever you are going. I am completely in agreement that we should always use carseats but it just isnt always possible or practical, especially if you dont have yr own car.

Interesting thread this!! I don't have a car, and therefore don't have a car seat. Neither do the taxi firms I use. Sometimes I have to take my dd (now 16 mths) out without a seat as it's impossible to get from place to place via public transport - I don't like doing this, but as it's almost impossible to find a carseat that fits ALL cars, that is easy to carry, etc - I have to do it. When she was tiny it was much easier as the backward facing seats seem to fit more cars, but it's been hell since.

Still I've finally decided to get a car - so will be able to get a proper seat for her - and won't feel so guilty when I have to use taxis, etc.

I have once and only once held dd in the rear of a car without a car seat. She was 2 months old, middle of December and we had been to a party. It was midnight and we broke down. Our car seat wouldn't fit in my parents car.

On that one occasion I felt it the lesser of 2 evils, sit around waiting for ages in the freezing cold or allow my mum to very slowly drive us home.

We just took some internal flights in the USA, and held onto 15 month old on our laps -- ie, no belt for baby. Didn't feel very safe to me, but then again, the baby-lap-belts they give you for long-haul flights never seem adequate, either.

Last year a baby here was travelling in the front passenger seat of the car while her mother breastfed her - they were involved in a fairly minor collision and the baby was thrown through the windscreen and killed. (Both parents were physically unhurt.) That news story crushed me - I was torn between feeling anguished for the mother who had lost her little baby whilst doing something so precious and wonderful and for the soul-destroying knowledge that she had held her in her arms and yet could not save her, and at the same time angry and upset that they had been so ignorant to travel this way in the first place. They were on holiday as I recall - it would have been so simple in hindsight just to stop somewhere to feed the bub. Their grief and guilt must have seemed insurmountable. No matter how tightly you are holding your child, or how secure they seem to be, unless they are in an approved restraint, they are NOT safe!

Ghosty, what you saw must have horrified you, and it is a shame that you could not do anything about it, but they would probably not have listened anyway, or would have have some excuse why the baby was not in a carseat on that occasion. I understand how you feel, but you cannot beat yourself up for their poor decision. Hopefully it was a once-off and the baby is normally strapped up in a different car.

Btw the laws here in Australia are that babies 0-6 mnth must have a capsule or child carseat, between 6m and 3-4 yrs a child carseat and then a booster seat. An adult seatbelt cannot be used without a booster seat until approx age 7. But I have just found out that in some states of Australia, babies under 1 do not have to use a child restraint in a taxi "if one is not available"! And in the ACT, it is children under 16! The only stipulation is that they must then travel in the back seat. Does anyone else find this ridiculous? What are the taxi laws over in the UK?

Like AngieL I had to take DS in an ambulance to A&E - he was about 11 months. And like others when he was born they had insisted I had a car seat to leave the hospital with. However they dismissed me from A&E with no car seat, no money, no car etc - DS not even cleaned up, DH 100 miles away. I had to call a taxi to take me to a cash point and then onto DS's nursery where I'd left my car. I was fuming. And didn't know what to do. I held him on my lap in the back passenger side.

I actually asked the midwife what would happen if a proper car seat was not provided when the mother & baby left the hospital (as we were being checked into our car) and she blushed and said, well, nothing really - they obviously can't legally 'enforce' the rule. I'm not saying that that's right of course, but can't help thinking it is a waste of the midwife's time in leaving a busy maternity ward to go down to the car park. In our case they didn't actually check that the car seat was fitted correctly (of course we had 'practised' with a teddy bear before hand!).

We just took ours onto the maternity ward and carried DS out in it and that seemed good enough.

I think they have to escort you off the premises regardless of your mode of transport, but yes, they did make sure we had a car seat at our hospital.

Nobody escorted me. But we did carry ds off in his car seat. I have pictures of him asleep in it, in the garden on the day he came home. Aaah, so tiny!

When I had DS1 they didn't even see the car seat as GH forgot to bring it in from the car so once I was discharged we just walked out with me carrying our new bundle.
I remember at the time feeling horrified as I could really have been anyone off the street, although it was quite obvious I'd given birth recently, but we just walked out without any questions through the whole maternity hospital and part of the main hospital too. DH had been a real gem and parked they car as far away as possible so that we had about a 15 minute walk....oh did I say gem? I meant idiot!

While I was in hospital with ds, a mother in my ward was stopped when she was leaving with her new baby in a wicker moses basket. The midwive wanted to know if they were going to be driven home, and then told them that the basket was unsuitable and that they would need a car seat. The baby's father was not impressed but eventually disappeared for a couple of hours and returned with a car seat.

We always make sure ds is properly belted into his car seat - no matter whose car wwe are in but as someone mentioned on another thread, it really annoys me the way we all get thrown about on buses - it almost seems wilful on the part on many bus drivers!

BTW, my worst witness to negligent driving story is the idiot woman reversing her can ONTO a small roundabout (not very busy, but she certainly did not have a clear view) with three unbelted children moving about in the back of the car and all this while, wait for it... she chatted to someone on her mobile phone!!!!! makes me want to scream just thinking about it but I was too paralysed with disbelief at the time to even note her numberplate

Ghosty, in your situation, I would have called the police with no hesistation. If I didn't have a mobile phone with me I'd take down the registration number and call it in when I got home. I have done this many times, and I would feel it resting on my consience if I had not. I read in one of the posts that it would serve the parents right if the baby was injured or killed; but I could never live with myself if I ever found out that a child had been killed when I could have called the police and had the situation rectified. Perhaps it would serve the parents right, but would it serve the child right? A child is defenseless, and if the parent is knowledgably and obviously endangering a child I will voice my opinion and do what I can to help the child. The child cannot help itself. It's the job of the parent but some parents are just useless.

Just recently I called the police from my car on the highway (I was the passenger-don't get me started on people who talk on the phone and drive at the same time). Directly in front of us was a large truck with three children sitting free in the back. Our cars were going 60 miles per hour (nearly 100 kilometers per hour), and these children were sprawled out in the back of the truck. Can you imagine the havoc and tragedy if the truck had a collision at that speed? Or even a slow speed! The dispatcher took all their information and then I hung up. We slowed down to a safer speed (dh is paranoid with dd in the car). About ten minutes later we passed the truck pulled over with two police cruisers behind it. The driver was being arrested. Quite fitting, I thought. He could have killed the lot of them. When I was a teenager and worked the drive-through at McDonalds, we routinely reported cars that came through with children out of seats or on laps.

Here the law is that every child under 20lbs and one year of age be in a rear-facing carseat. Children up to 45lbs must be in a forward-facing harness carseat. Children up to 70lbs and 8 years of age must be in a booster seat.

There is no price to a child's safety of life and limb.

Almost forgot to say, I have seen this behavior from people of all races and all "classes". Rich people aren't necessarily smarter than us dirt poor scum.

Wow ... after a few days without a computer I have found this thread again to see what the general consensus was and I just wanted to say thank you for all you input ...
I agree with all of you in that it was just so shocking to see this kind of thing happen when a child is so helpless ... I agree with you Corbin and that what I should have done was take down the number plate and phoned the police when I got home ... I will do that next time if I see it again ... I only hope that nothing happens to that little one that I saw ...
I was sad to see that there were some nasty comments made by someone earlier on in the thread ... people ought to keep that sort of stuff to themselves IMO!!!

Just to add ... if you think about it ... holding a child on your lap under YOUR seat belt is almost worse ... I may be wrong but if there was an accident your weight would surely crush a baby or child?