OMG - am astounded by what I saw today!

[popsycal]

We were driving into tesco.....a car was waiting to pull out onto the main road

A man was driving a woman in the passenger seat
standing on the man's knee whilst he was driving was a child less than a year old

the car was moving and was about to pull out onto a busy road!!

WTF

This makes me so cross.Yesterday I saw a woman pushing a toddler around in a buggy,with a lit cigarette drifting straight into the childs face.Then they got into a car,piled up with junk in the back & the parcel shelf,with toddler unrestrained on mums knee in the front.

I also hate to see dogs jumping about in cars,or lying on the parcel shelf.Brake suddenly & theres nothing to stop Rover hitting the back of your head.......

Later on the same day I heard a mother telling her toddler that she was 'going to punch your lights out if you do that one more time.'

It amazes me when you see this - especially since I got stopped by the police a couple of weeks ago, for having an unrestrained toddler in the back seat. Now before you all yell at me, as he approached the car, he started laughing. What he thought was my unrestrained toddler, was in fact my dog. And she was in a doggy harness

BUT, I have my DOG in a harness, and some people don't bother with their CHILD??? It beggars belief

The Swiss law was tightened only a couple of years ago. Under 12's can only ride in the back, restrained in seats/booster if under 7 and the appropriate number of bodies to seats. I have heard a report of an offender having their licence rescinded on the spot but you equally see plenty of loose kids in the back (some out of fitted child seats) and still overloaded vehicles. Fortunately for them the accident stats are not as high as UK as population is less dense and public transport more widely used.

We paid extra to get an isofix seat for ds as it is the safest around at the moment.
We also have out dog on a harness, what people dont seem to realise is that if you hit something or have to stop very suddenly 8 stone of dog flying forward would break your neck on the way through as well as probably kill your dog. (Would people please stop saying that quote about needing a licence for a dog, cos sadly in the uk its not the case at all)
I got very angry the other day as I was we drove into our parking space at b&Q we realised there was a baby in the car next to us and the owner of the car was nowhere around. after 20 minutes of waiting in our car (theirs was locked) a woman ran came out and ran to her car and drove off very quickly when she saw me getting out of our car
people are so odd i dont understand them

We paid extra to get an isofix seat for ds as it is the safest around at the moment.
We also have out dog on a harness, what people dont seem to realise is that if you hit something or have to stop very suddenly 8 stone of dog flying forward would break your neck on the way through as well as probably kill your dog. (Would people please stop saying that quote about needing a licence for a dog, cos sadly in the uk its not the case at all)
I got very angry the other day as I was we drove into our parking space at b&Q we realised there was a baby in the car next to us and the owner of the car was nowhere around. after 20 minutes of waiting in our car (theirs was locked) a woman ran came out and ran to her car and drove off very quickly when she saw me getting out of our car
people are so odd i dont understand them

We just forked out £155 for a sn car seat for ds2! Gulp.

So what do you do about taxis when your child is too small for an adult belt? Dd is 2.5, and I think I remmeber reading that for a toddler it's more dangerous to be in an adult belt than unsecured...maybe internal injuries because the belt doesn't go on the bones but on the soft bits...is that right or am I totally wrong? We have a britax renaissance car seat for dd, which weighs more than she does, it's not feasible to take it out with us, and as we don't have a car it's for using in parents' or friends' cars. We also have a lightweight polystyrene shell seat, but a recent report from Which suggested this was almost as bad as no seat at all. I really don't know what the answer is until she's a bit older and ready for a booster seat.

in reply to what you can do with a 2 1/2 yr old in a taxi etc is buy this seatbelt holder from argos for about £10 , it holds a normal seatbelt in a position so its sits properly on your child, i use it in other peoples cars as it does nt take any room up and also they`re brill to take on hols with you just in case .

Bambi, my understanding was that until about age 3 children's intestines particularly the liver is outside not inside the pelvic bone, hence the 'toddler tummy', so the lap part of an adult seatbelt risks crushing this if pressed against. The seatbelt adjusters would deal with the shoulder strap but don't help in getting the lapbelt onto the pelvis. I'd like to be told I'm wrong on this, because the adjuster is a neat bit of kit and as you say, easy to carry about.

And people honestly think that if there was an accident thay they would be able to hold onto their child. The laws of physics obviously don't apply to some people....