Thursday, November 09, 2006
Car Seats
How many of you have noticed a new bit of legislation on car seats hit the books recently? Don't have kids under the age of 12? No surprise you haven't then. Suffice it to say the EU, and its doggedly loyal puppy the UK Parliament, have enacted a law that any child under the age of 12 or height of 135cm must be on a car saftey seat that has passed certain saftey codes.
Sounds reasonable doesn't it? Do you know how many children's lives the government statisticians have reluctantly admited this saftey measure might save? Less than one. I don't know how you save less than one child, but I suppose that means maybe one every two years. Across the whole county.
Now, admitadely if its my child's life that has been saved I shall be eternally grateful. However, what that statistic says is that these seats are essentially useless. A child using a normal seat belt may get a bit more scraped up in a car accident, but it will live.
Still, children's lives are precious aren't they? So no one has peeped at this legislation. Do you know that those same goverment statisticians have deemed that this will likely cost the UK economy somewhere in the region of £100m? Thats a lot of dosh.
I know this personally. You see, I have three kids. LL has jokingly stated that we stopped at three kids so we wouldn't have to buy an MPV. Though there are lots of other reasons we stopped at three (age and a tricky birth of our third being primary), there is an iota of truth in her joke.
Thing is, we might have to! Three child booster seats just don't fit across the back seat of your average modern vehicle. I have a nice big saloon, and it just doesn't work. We have Pirate Pete boosted up on some soft cusions, but technically that's illegal. We've actually gone out and test driven a number of MPVs. This will cost money, plus I might have to trade in my nice big chufty bmer.
Oh the shame of it...
Sounds reasonable doesn't it? Do you know how many children's lives the government statisticians have reluctantly admited this saftey measure might save? Less than one. I don't know how you save less than one child, but I suppose that means maybe one every two years. Across the whole county.
Now, admitadely if its my child's life that has been saved I shall be eternally grateful. However, what that statistic says is that these seats are essentially useless. A child using a normal seat belt may get a bit more scraped up in a car accident, but it will live.
Still, children's lives are precious aren't they? So no one has peeped at this legislation. Do you know that those same goverment statisticians have deemed that this will likely cost the UK economy somewhere in the region of £100m? Thats a lot of dosh.
I know this personally. You see, I have three kids. LL has jokingly stated that we stopped at three kids so we wouldn't have to buy an MPV. Though there are lots of other reasons we stopped at three (age and a tricky birth of our third being primary), there is an iota of truth in her joke.
Thing is, we might have to! Three child booster seats just don't fit across the back seat of your average modern vehicle. I have a nice big saloon, and it just doesn't work. We have Pirate Pete boosted up on some soft cusions, but technically that's illegal. We've actually gone out and test driven a number of MPVs. This will cost money, plus I might have to trade in my nice big chufty bmer.
Oh the shame of it...
