Maybe it’s time to start putting babies back in the front seat. Seems these large vehicles swallow little kids so their parents forget they are even there. Tragic.
All you’d need to do is have the baby’s bag in front with you. That visual should be enough to remind a person who is so distracted that they forget they are parents.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/07/29/deaths_of_children_in_hot_cars_rising/
Since the mid-1990s, the number of children who died of heat exhaustion inside vehicles has risen dramatically, totaling around 340 in the past 10 years. Ironically, one reason is a change parent-drivers made to protect children after juvenile air-bag deaths peaked in 1995: They put them in the back seat, where they are more easily forgotten.
The correlation between the rise in these deaths and the 1990s move to put children in the back seat is striking.
“Up to that time, the average number of children dying of hyperthermia in the United States was about 11 a year,” says Jan Null, an adjunct professor of meteorology at San Francisco State University who has studied this trend. “Then we put them in the back, turned the car seats around. And from ‘98 to 2006, that number is 36 a year.”
Hear hear!!!
Not to mention the accidents caused by moms reaching back to the back seat searching for the lost binkie or whatnot.
Amen. This is a brutal unintended consequence of a prissy nanny-state law. If I was a new parent and had to cart an infant around in the rear seat, I know that at first I'd be a dangerous driver. My mind wouldn't be on the road because I'd constantly be looking behind me or studying the rear-view mirror. Eventually to "be safe," I'd have to check that perfectly good and healthy instinct at the door and retrain my mind NOT to look. After awhile ... drive the vehicle, baby, errands ... out of sight, out of mind.
And this guy is going to have to live with himself. My god, what sadness. His first, natural, healthy impulse would have been to put the baby on the seat beside him. This death probably would not have occured if not for a nanny state rule.
Chuck Yeager describes the essence of all great Americans when he writes: "I've always said that the rules are made for people who aren't willing to make up their own." Americans with the true interests of their kids and future will conclude, "Screw the nanny state rules." The real rules are to put their kids first.
I totally agree.
It's crazy you can put a baby in the back of a VW bug, but the front seat of a Dodge Ram 1500 is illegal here. That's just madness.
You have nailed it!
Past time says I.
The classic "If it saves just one life" or "It's for the children" arguments won't work in this instance because it means giving up an element of control and an excuse for a traffic stop that may yield tens of thousands of dollars and confiscation of the vehicle.
Never will happen.
that is not a bad point you made about front seat.....hope you didn’t get flamed too bad..
parent of 5 here
“Maybe it’s time to start putting babies back in the front seat.”
I think that’s a good idea. At least it could be done in the summer months.