Safe Speed Forums

I can't help thinking that this has not been clearly thought out.

If children not using booster seats is dangerous then why are there any exemptions? If the exemptions are for reasons of convenience then it makes no sense that convenience overrides safety. We do a lot of inconvenient things in the name of safety (visualises check in queues at airport) for the prevention of things with infinitesimal likelihood of occurring.

Of course, the real reason for the exemptions is that people realised that the whole law was daft and would never get passed if it were a blanket restriction.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

But the convenience v safety thing isn't an ON/OFF switch is it? It's a "continuum", indeed our lives are ruled by compromises that slide us between safety and convenience.

I would say that the this law has been introduced with a few exemptions to make it workable and acceptable, in the belief that doing so will ratchet the system as a whole slightly further towards safety [ok, and away from convenience I guess].

I'd guess that in a few years time, when there are heaps more booster seats in the system, and public acceptance has grown to a level comparable with seat belt compliance then these exemptions will be tightened up; but for now I can see the logic in keeping those as a compromise to gain public acceptance for a law that seems fairly sensible.

The cost of the things is another point. 5 or 10 years ago you couldn't buy one for less than about £15-£20, but with the increase in demand more manufacturers are now offering budget ones. Perhaps when it reaches a stage where every supermarket and filling station has them for under a fiver there will be a good case for tightening up the regs a bit.

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CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Yes there are legitimate defences, but what worries me is will the police listen if people are stopped in those circumstances, or will they just say 'the court will have to consider that'? That's what they currently do for speeding defences and it puts people under appalling pressure just to pay up.

Another thought: If you're taking someone else's kids somewhere how can the police prove how old they are? You might not even know how old they are. What if an 11 year old tells you they are 12 because they don't want to use a booster seat? It might even be the parent who tells you that they are 12 because they know that their spoilt little brat doesn't like booster seats...

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Andrew.

A few things that have annoyed me about this legislation:-

1. All over the news is the claim that this legislation will save up to 2000 childrens lives a year. We does this figure come from. If 3500 or so people die as a result of an RTA, are over half of these deaths, unrestrained children in cars? The figures just don't add up, these spokes people pluck a figure out of the air, I reckon if we add all these claims for deaths due to mobile phone use, excess speed, tiredness, drunk driving, unrestrained children, seat belt wearing, etc, etc we actually kill about 20,000 people a year!

2. If you are caught violating this new law (by whom I don't know), you get a £30 on the spot fine. But if you excercise your legal right to have the case proven against you in a court of law, they'll fine you £500!! That's intimidation.

3. I have 3 kids aged 13 months, 4 years and 5 years old. The eldest has to sit in the middle of the rear bench seat without a booster seat because I just can't fit 3 child seats in a row. However, the eldest is still far too small to be effectively restrained by the seat belt. This situation has been acknowledged by the legislation but there has been no attempt to force manufacturers to come up with a solution. I think that if the legislation was implemented pure safety reasons, they would not exempt this situation. This would force child seat manufacturers or car makers to come up with a solution to fix a booster seat in the middle of a bench seat. because at the end of the day, just because I have 3 of the beggers, doesn't mean I am happy to loose one of them in a car accident just cos there is no option for proper restraint.

4. Why o why can't you get ISOFIX booster seats!

5. My solution - car makers should supply an additional seatbelt section that fixes to the ISOFIX point and is adjustable so that is pulls the shoulder part down to the right height for the child...no booster required!


Ho-hum, rant over.

keycare I have the same problem you mention in point 3. I can easily fit three adults in the back of my car but I can only just get the three children's seats in. In my wife's car we can only get two of the seats in.

Why do they make children's seats so big and so fiddly to fit securely? I have often wondered since we had children if the designers ever actually tried putting real live children into the seats they design. The buckle on the youngest's seat is fiddly even without her wriggling. We ALWAYS use the child seats because we want our children to be as safe and comfortable as possible but the designers don't make it easy.

I dimly recall when my kids were that age. I have two main points. First, what do you do if the child flatly refuses to sit on the booster seat - e.g. throws a tantrum or something, or says "when I'm in my friend's car I don't have to sit on a booster seat"? Do you tell them they will have to walk home? Second, please will the Government explain to me how a booster seat helps if the child is lying down?

Yet another in the litany of half baked, ill thought out, pieces of legislation. In any case the people who let their kids climb all over the car without any sort of restraint at all are hardly likely to affected are they? They are safe drivers, so there's no need for their kids to be restrained.

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Brian

Isn't that precisely what happens with speed camera convictions? You are guilty as charged. Don't you dare waste the court's time by trying to prove your innocence.

The fact that you may have been unaware that the child was as young as that is obviously your fault - you should have insisted on seeing her birth certificate before allowing her into the car. (Of course the police did that before charging you didn't they. )

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Brian

keycare said:
>> 1. All over the news is the claim that this legislation will save up to
>> 2000 childrens lives a year. We does this figure come from.

From the RoSPA car seat site, in conjunction with THINK!
(http://www.childcarseats.org.uk/carryin ... istics.htm)

Child Car Passenger Casualties, Year 2004, Great Britain

......................... 0 - 4 years ......... 5 - 7 years ....... 8 - 11 years
Killed ............................. 15 ...................... 4 ....................... 5
Seriously Injured .......... 123 ................... 101 ................... 147
Slightly Injured .......... 2,077 ................ 1,983 ................. 3,241
Total ......................... 2,215 ................ 2,088 ................. 3,393

I'm surprised they appear to have used one of the age categories totals, rather than just say 'We saved the lives of nearly 8 thousand children.
(Grand Total 7696 'casualties')

Note it fails to state how many of these children were not buckled up - perhaps that's where the 2K figure out of the 8K total comes from?

/fb

(He uses statistics like a drunk uses a lamp-post: for support rather than illumination...)

I wonder if they have introduced this seat belt law to try and deter parents from school runs.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

If they have more kids will die. I'm quite sure it's far more dangerous (statistically) to walk to school than to be driven.

In fact I strongly associate the growth in the school run with a decline in child pedestrian casualties.

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Paul Smith
Our scrap speed cameras petition got over 28,000 sigs
The Safe Speed campaign demands a return to intelligent road safety

I agree with that, but does this government see it that way. It’d be interesting to know if casualties go up around schools as from today.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

Daily Mirror



I know it's all over the papers but it was this bit that interested me.



It seems to be the norm now that if you take it to court it will cost you.

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Useless laws weaken necessary laws.

That's the price of justice!

There is perhaps an issue here, that is deliberately being kept quiet by the powers that be.

They implemented this law because they had to. It was forced upon them by the E.U., and they had no choice in the matter. So rather than just come clean, we are just fed the usual stats and rhetoric....

Full details of the EU legislation are here:

http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/pri/en/oj/dat/2003/l_115/l_11520030509en00630067.pdf#search=%22Directive%202003%2F20%2FEC%22

I thought that most here would have been aware of that. An alarming ammount of what the government spews forth originates in europe.

I'm sitting at my desk putting together a performnace management system for my new employer. As is the norm there are people rushing headlong into solutions before they know what the questions are.

The government are constantly doing the same....the answer is child booster seats.....now what's the question? I have no real objection to them so long as their implementation is based on FACT!!

Haven’t been following this thread much as it doesn’t apply to me.

but see ; http://www.safespeed.org.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9433

and listen to link at Radio Devon this week.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/networks ... devon_mon#

It seem booster seats are not needed if the seat belt can be lowered with some gizmo.

Also type approved seats are not needed for some time, so you can use the ones you already got.

Listen to the programme and the bit by Paul about fiddled crash stats is also very good.

My sister is miffed, no very miffed, she spent £25,000 on a landrover 110 defender with 9 seats


5 children and 3 adults is quite commen.... So It looks like the children will have to drive and the adults sit in the boot

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Speed limit sign radio interview. TV Snap Unhappy
“It has never been the rule in this country – I hope it never will be - that suspected criminal offences must automatically be the subject of prosecution” He added that there should be a prosecution: “wherever it appears that the offence or the circumstances of its commission is or are of such a character that a prosecution in respect thereof is required in the public interest”
This approach has been endorsed by Attorney General ever since 1951. CPS Code

You all don't need to worry. The sheer stupidity of this law will mean that nobody will take any notice of it.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

In shoes or in bare feet??!

Does this mean Police men are going to be carrying tape measures and measure children at the road side?

If I insist my child is tall enough do they have the right to measure him. If I withhold permission and they do it anyway wouldn't that be assaulting my child?

And just how from the outside of the car can you tell if a child

is short and sitting on a booster
tall and sitting on the seat
short and sitting on the seat or
tall and sitting on a booster

? ? ? ?

No doubt a camera will soon be created that can figure it out.

You can just see this being a total and utter mess can't you!