Be wise before the event

Driving with children?  Your eyes must be on the road and your hands on the steering wheel, but  you must also glance with one eye at the vision mirror above you from time to time. This is necessary  in order  to monitor how your child is behaving in the back seat. Fine, if Johnny is sleeping or enjoying the scenery outside – which is seldom the case of an active child; distracting, if he is getting restless and fiddling with buttons on the door handle. Your concentration may be affected as a result of all this distraction.

The whole mission is to get to Grandma’s place on time, or to the super market before it closes. Time, the traffic jam and all sorts of things are on your mind at the moment.

Why burden yourself with extra job of baby-minding by mirror,  when you can delegate this task to a baby chair?  Your Amah is not reliable in an accident, especially if she’s not fastened the rear seat belt – both minder and baby would be thrown all over the place inside the car.

A few days ago I read that child seats would be made mandatory, in two years’ time, or was it three? Why not tomorrow morning, 8 o’clock?  We cannot afford to lose any more young life before these seats are seriously installed, and enforced?

The other day I saw a child aged about five years old, I think, standing and leaning out of an open window of a moving car. I was attracted to her waving at me – what a sweetie she is. We were unfortunately travelling in opposite directions; Auntie Di would have asked me to overtake, stop, and then she’d have laid down the law in no uncertain terms! Well, maybe it was fortunate, for peace on the public  road anyway. But that little child was in serious danger. The driver should have the guts to tell off the minder  or mummy or granny or whoever sat with the children in the back seat, not to open the window. I dreaded to think what could happen if the car should suddenly stop or swerve. The little girl would have been thrown about inside the car, or tipped out of the open window.

Billions of dollars have been spent on sending men and women in rockets to the outer space to find  life, but no scientist has invented a smart car that is absolutely accident free to save a human life.  One day it may be possible to do so, but for the time being we have to be smarter than the car. We have introduced the air bags, and the car seats for children have been manufactured and are used in cars in other countries. These are on sale at some shops in town but they are not compulsory  because there is yet no legislation to make it mandatory for use by a child in a car in Malaysia. Careful drivers rent them from the AAA if they’re expecting visitors with children, or  when travelling outside Kuching,  but that is not enough. They should be introduced NOW, with well-toothed legislation to govern this use of the seat soonest. Malang tidak berbau bah.

I have no statistics on the number  of children’s  lives which have been saved by the child seat. In their joint letter “Reality of drowning”  to the Star (2nd July), Datuk Dr Amar Singh HSS of Ipoh Hospital and Professor Dr Krishnan Rajam of Penang Medical College, wrote  “Between  900 and 1000 children die on our roads and 300 to 350 die from drowning every year.”

They are concerned about drowning and I refer to the deaths of children on the roads. To them, I must expressed my sincere gratitude for the statistics.  If a child chair was used in each of the cases mentioned, how many children lives could have been saved?

I have only heard from parents in New Zealand how useful the seat is for the child in cars. It has made driving less strenuous – simultaneous minding of the child-  for the driving mother or father whose concern for the safety of the child is paramount.

I have heard about the good job of the airbags in saving lives of the drivers. Normally air bags are in front of the vehicle and the back sitters  are not protected by it in most vehicles; in case of children they are not all that safe. All car manufacturers advise drivers NOT to have small children in the front seat, ever.

Introduce law now

The authorities here are still ‘mulling’ introduction of this law. In New Zealand and many other countries  this rule has been imposed for quite some time now and parents have appreciated the importance of this safety measure for the benefit of the child. It’s high time that we in Malaysia did the same.

For the people who live and work in the cities and big towns  cars are no longer a luxury. They have become a necessity, especially in the absence of well organised public transport.

Initially parents will react in several ways: an extra expenditure for the baby’s seat, on the one hand, and on the other it is a good investment plus an insurance for the life of beloved child.

A small sum invested in the seat is worth a million ringgit which is hardly worth the precious life of a human of your own creation.

I must apologise in advance to any parent who thinks that I should mind my own business. But I am thinking of that pretty girl in that car the other day and it does not  matter whether she is my own grandchild or not – all children are entitled to protection by law.

Teach them early in life that there is no such thing as freedom of movement for them while in the car. There’s no total freedom of movement in or outside the car for them. Freedom of speech is there –  they can scream their heads off while you manipulate  the seat straps and buckles,  but it is all for the good of the wee darlings.

And don’t tell me: ‘Oh, I can’t strap Jimmy into a car seat – he would cry!’  If Jimmy is thrown through the windscreen of your car and killed, you will cry a lot more.

Happy Driving.

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