Protect children in cars from their parents

THE EDITOR: Concerning the safety of children in cars: Somewhere in the archives of the Ministry of Transport, in a package dated in 1983, there probably is a set of materials on seatbelt safety, including the safety of children in child-restraint seats. I know it’s there because I obtained it from the NTSB, USA and mailed in through the TT Embassy in Washington, to the then Transport Commissioner, the late Richardson A Henry. The adult seat belt law was enacted, and I later saw some of the ads on television in TT during the eighties. Perhaps the people were not ready for laws to protect children in cars from their parents. Perhaps the time is now.

America’s seat belt law had long been enacted when I was being driven to Kennedy Airport by my husband, to come home to my mother’s funeral, when our car skidded on ice in the pre-dawn darkness, and smashed sideways into an eighteen wheeler going at 70 miles an hour. We left the road and had almost jammed into the angle of the overpass and its supports when my husband wrenched the wheel back, and we came to a stop on the grass curb, where vehicles were rushing past at top speed. The car had hit on my side. I got a large hole in my stocking from broken glass. It was our only injury. The car suffered more than two thirds of its worth in damages. Seat belts saved us. When I came home, after hitch-hiking to Kennedy airport, with suitcase and passport/ticket held out to get attention, I found we had no seatbelt laws, and mostly bench seats in cars. I was so tense all through the week I was here. When I returned to the USA, I decided I was going to help the seat belt process which was already being discussed. I got video as well as pamphlets from the NTBS and mailed them in batches home to Mr Henry. They will send you everything they have, all you have to do is ask, like I did on behalf of my country.

A few years before that, a small child in Delaware (which call itself the first state and sometimes lives up to it) was killed in a road accident because she flew through the windscreen on impact. She had been going to the doctor to remove a cast from her broken arm. Within a week the state had a child restraint law that was so strict that police stocked their cruisers with child seats. You got a ticket if you had an unrestrained child in the front seat, and you got a loan of a child seat until you returned (a couple days) with a seat of your own. Three small children? Three restraining seats, it’s that simple, and costly. Policemen in every state where it’s law ticket people for not having seatbelts on, and not restraining children. One cannot go to a hospital to take home a newborn, without a child safety seat. It’s that serious.

Some of my Trini friends at home compare the USA to a police state. There are some areas of the law that are justly criticised, but the one pertaining to small children and their careless parents is never questioned. Child safety seats are a regular item at baby-showers now. They have replaced the blankets and booties, the mini-sports suits and sneakers. The child has to live first, to experience any of these. Seat belts and child restraint seats save lives, and protect children from unthinking adults. The children who would benefit from Vision 2020 will not see that vision if they are dead. Seat restraints for children should become a law with immediate effect. The true people’s representatives in parliament should collaborate to give the country a safe new year for its children.

LINDA EDWARDS
A lifelong Educator