Let me start with the disclosure that during my own childhood, my parents had a Karmen Gia which had no backseat and that my favorite place during long roadtrips was sleeping on the window ledge in their Grand Torino.
That said, it is still shocking to see small kids in Jordan in cars without seatbelts or car seats or anything. Small kids are usually in their mothers lap and backseats can often have four or five kids in them.
Yesterday, in our posh neighborhood (where if they aren't using car seats they aren't using them anywhere), we pulled up at a streetlight behind a car with a sunroof. A small child (3?) was standing on the console between the front seat with its head out of the sunroof. He was very cute and we laughed. Then Dan said "I bet he's still there when the light changes." I replied "No way. I bet you a dollar." But indeed, the light changed. Their car and our car turned left and the kid's head was still stuck out of the sunroof for at least the next block while we still followed. A parent was holding on to him but it was our "we're not in DC" moment of the day.
1 comment:
wow. That is scary. Funny, I was thinking about this the other day. I can't even think of an occurence when we "needed" the car seat - meaning, any time where out kids were at risk of being jostled or thrown out of the car...I simply can't imagine not having them in a car seat. I kind of feel the same way with seatbelts. I feel weird riding in the front seat without one.
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