Child car safety; Child safety in and around the car

Child Safety In and Around the Car
Car safety for kids is a subject with many different facets. Not only do accidents on the road pose the biggest safety threat to children of all the safety hazards that exist in the modern world, but cars can be a safety hazard to kids who are playing around the house or even playing in car that's parked in the driveway. This chapter will explore every detail of car safety for children, from driveway accidents to encouraging seatbelt use among kids. Let's start with a few important rules for car safety:

Child car safety rule #1: Seat children properly
Safety experts recommend that all children ride in the back seat until they are at least 13 years old. This is for two reasons: First, front seat airbags can deploy with enough force to kill a child, or even a small adult. What's more frustrating about these deaths is that they often occur in otherwise minor fender-benders that barely cause any damage to the car. Yet because the airbag deployed and a small child was sitting in the front seat, you have a dead kid afterwards. The second and more pervasive reason is that the backseat is by far the statistically safest area of the car in an accident. So by sitting kids in the back, you give them the best odds for survival and avoiding injury in most car crashes.

Child car safety rule #2: Behave on the road!
Talk with children about the importance of behaving themselves on the road. Each year many accidents are caused by a distracted parent trying to solve a dispute that arose among the fighting kids in the back. Some of these accidents result in children being killed. You might think that kids would know how dangerous their antics can be, but many don't make the connection between how they behave and the safety of mom's driving. They tend to assume that adults are all-powerful robots who will automatically get them to where they're going. So at a peaceful time when they aren't acting up, explain to them all the different things you have to concentrate on when you're driving, (turn signals, shifting, traffic lights, speed, pedestrians, other cars, traffic signs, etc.), and how difficult it is to do so when they're being rowdy. Teach them that proper car behavior means...

- No fighting
- No unbuckling your seatbelt while the car is moving
- No shouting in the car
- No throwing things (inside the car or out the window)

Child car safety rule #3: Don't play in or around cars
Many things can go wrong when children play in or around cars: they could get run over while playing underneath it, they could put it out of park and end up in a runaway car, they could lock themselves in the trunk and suffocate, they could strangle themselves by playing with the automatic windows. Talk with kids about these dangers, and teach them that cars are not something to play around with.

* Print a Don't play in the trunk car safety coloring sheet for your kids
* Print a Don’t play around cars safety coloring sheet for you kids

Child car safety rule #4: If a driver appears drunk, don’t get in the car
Drunk drivers have existed for as long as there have been cars, and children have always been injured and killed by them in masses. Yet in recent years we've seen a troubling uptick in substance abuse or alcohol problems among soccer moms or other seemingly ordinary parents. We've also witnessed numerous instances where children have lost their lives riding in the car with another parent or caretaker who was shuttling a group of kids around while intoxicated. Considering that alcoholics and those with substance abuse problems are several thousand times more threatening to the children in our community than the registered sex offenders people seem irrationally preoccupied with, it's about time we start taking this threat seriously. So, teach your kids...

A) How a drunk person acts or what they behave like. Give them some examples - it can be a fun family experience taking turns acting out intoxicated behavior. Be sure to include subtle examples, such as slurring speech or dropping keys.

B) Teach them to be aware about their driver's drinking habits, and let them know how much is too much. Generally speaking, 3 or 4 alcoholic drinks will put someone over the legal limit for driving.

C) Reinforce the fact that adults aren't perfect, and that it's OK to disobey an adult respectfully if you know they are doing something they shouldn't. Tell children that if they have any doubt about whether an adult is sober enough to drive, they should not get in the car with them-at least not before explaining their concerns to a different adult and getting a second opinion.

D) If someone has been drinking and seems tipsy, teach children to respectfully say, "I don't think I should get in the car with you. I need to call someone else to get me home," or "you don't seem well enough to be driving." If it is just them alone with an adult, and that person is clearly drunk, tell them they should hide the keys beforehand and pretend they don't know where they are. Above all, let them know they won't be punished for trying to do the right thing.