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Old Jan 15, 2010, 07:14 PM
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AAAAA AAAAA is offline
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Member Since: Oct 2007
Location: Midwest
Posts: 5,042
I see your point, but the fact remains if you don't have the proper car seat, leave the kid at home. I remember driving cross country laying in the rear view window. I don't think the car seat had even been invented at that time. I do recall a "pumpkin" seat. It wasn't strapped in or anything, but something that kept the baby from rolling on the floor. I remember my Aunt laying her baby on the back seat when I was little.

People are more aware now of the dangers of not having the child secure. AND as referenced in Tim's thread, cars back then were built like tanks. They did not go as fast as normal traffic does now. And I don't know how things were where you grew up, but in my home town many many people did not even own a car. The idea of commuting to your place of employment was unheard of. But then again, on a Saturday afternoon it wasn't unusual for my dad to grab a case of beer and me and about 10 of my cousins would pile into the bed of a pick up truck for the 3 mile trip to the beach. If you were over the age of 9 you could sit on the side, you didn't even have to sit on the bed itself. Everyone in town did this for decades, some dumb @ss' still do it to this day (beer included), doesn't mean it's ok.

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Things like this hit a raw nerve with me. One friend absolutely refused to speak to me again over a similar incident. We live in farm country. A co-worker was tilling his farm with his toddler on his lap, the child fell off and went through the blades. The child did not survive. My response was "what the hell was he thinking!!!!" This friend defended him by saying "we've all done it." There is a child severely injured every single year by doing this. Yet people do not learn.

The laws haven't caught up with it yet. It is still perfectly legal for a 12 year old child to drive a huge piece of farm equipment on the roads. These things are HUGE, take up both lanes of traffic to the point the combine must drive on the shoulder of the road, and it leaves all other traffic the shoulder of the other side to drive on. FOR BOTH DIRECTIONS! They only safety feature this stupid thing must have is a reflective triangle on the back. I can't tell you how many times I've come around the corner and found one of these things taking up the whole road in the dark.
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