Driving with children

Chances are that when we were kids, most of us were able to ride up front where Mum or Dad could keep an eye on us. Now, with the advent of car seats and safety fea­tures like pas­sen­ger airbags, chil­dren and tod­dlers are ban­ished to the back seat – which can be a prob­lem if you’re the only adult in the car and your child is behind you, play­ing up.

Accord­ing to a Halfords survey, 99% of par­ents had been dis­trac­ted by noisy chil­dren in the car. More than half of the 2,000 par­ents who took part said they believed that driv­ing with a scream­ing child was more dan­ger­ous than using a mobile phone.

This may just be a survey, but road traffic stat­ist­ics from the States show how dan­ger­ous such dis­trac­tions can be. Accord­ing to the Uni­ver­sity of Rich­mond in Vir­ginia, being dis­trac­ted by other pas­sen­gers, includ­ing chil­dren, was said to be respons­ible for 9% of road acci­dents.

But we can’t always leave the kids at home, so that means we must manage the dis­trac­tion they cause. Firstly, a sleepy baby is a quiet baby, so keep your chil­dren awake before you get in the car if you know you have a long jour­ney coming up. If they’re old enough, try to get them to play ener­getic games to really tire them out. Then, when in the car, ensure you have adequate sun shades to keep the light out­side from waking them up.

Once they’re safely in their car seat, feed them! A good way of keep­ing a tod­dler quiet is to give them a small pack of rais­ins, or some­thing that it takes ages for them to eat, like a dried fruit bar.

Take a spe­cial cuddly toy or game with you that they never nor­mally get a chance to play with. For young babies, you can also get activ­ity centres which attach to their car seats. Also, plan some breaks along the way to break the mono­tony for them, and reduce tired­ness for you.

Keep­ing older chil­dren informed as to where you are in the jour­ney will avoid the con­stant cry of, “are we there yet?”

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Ori­gin­ally posted 2008-​​01-​​29 12:18:00. Repub­lished by Blog Post Promoter

Tags: Airbag, Car seat, Child, Children, Halfords, Traffic collision, University of Richmond, Virginia
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