Saw a lovely baby today 
Only thing is, he was sitting on the lap of the passenger in the 4×4 behind us at the traffic lights 
Said passenger was also carrying what looked suspiciously like a take-away coffee cup (although to be fair, it might have just been a cold drink 
) which she was holding carefully away from him so that she could take regular sips over his head…
The driver was a young woman and the passenger rather older – looked like mother and daughter plus daughter’s baby – and as we went round the roundabout I could see that there was a little girl in the back who looked about 4 – but I could barely see her as she was so low in the seat; almost certainly no car seat or booster 
Why do it? There was plenty of space for the baby to be in a seat. It didn’t look as though either of the women was wearing a belt either – if that car had crashed they would all have bounced around like peas in very hard pod and I dread to think what would have happened to the children. It makes me so cross!
They had obviously spent so much on the tank and the $tarbucks double extra foamy nutmeg blurkacino that they had no money left to pay for trivia like child car seats
Know what you mean.
Do have to admit to being caught out by the new changes though (although realise what you are referring to is on a different scale). This morning I found myself in the ridiculous position of finding myself driving down the road with Ben in front on booster, Rachael in back in seat, Beth in middle on nothing, next to an empty booster for child we were about to pick up. Oops. It’s just that the middle is Beth’s place. You know, how they kids always sit in the same places in the car to save arguments. It’s just habit. Now I’m perfectly comfortable with Beth in middle on nothing, as it’s a smaller-than-normal 3 point harness. It doesn’t cut into her neck and appears to rest where it should over her pelvis. It’s also perfectly legal when the whole family is in the car as two boosters simply won’t fit next to R’s chair. Took me a while to realize that as soon as Chris gets out of the car, I’m now illegal unless we all rearrange and stick a spare booster from the boot into the front for child 3. And of course today was even worse, because the booster I’d got ready to pick up Beth’s friend was sitting there empty until we got to her house. It’s going to be a hard habit to break. Problem is, if I felt I was doing it becasue Beth was not safe in the middle, then really we ought to buy another car, because she’s just as ‘not safe’ when the car is full. Ugh… sorry to hijack your blog, but don’t have my own any more…
What great idea Barbara, you could take it in turns to blog in our comments – shall we have a rota?
I hate it when I see stuff like that
I alwayss wonder whether it would do any good to report it – might be marginally more listened-to now the new law has come in I suppose.
We did buy a new car a couple of months after we had #3 as I got fed up with sitting in the back if we were all there, but #1 was only just 4 and I obviously had no thought of taking her out of a car seat yet. One of the reasons I like our current van so much is that it allows for many safe and comfortable combinations of children and car seats!
Chris… hmm, tempting.
Alison… yes, know what you mean. Except now I’m doubting myself, lol. Beth was not yet 4.5 when Rachael was born, but I don’t remember ever having 3 seats in the car at the same time. R was in the front and I sat between a seat and a booster in the back (with just a lap belt). We bought our current car just before Beth’s 5th birthday because I was sick of it too. Couldn’t really stretch to anything bigger, but then you have to start asking all those horrible questions about at what price is your children’s safety? Priceless is the obvious answer, but then we’d just never be able to get in the car at all. And then my head just starts to hurt when trying to work out exactly how essential every trip in the car I make is. Am I kidding myself that Beth is reasonably safe? (“reasonably” because clearly no car journey is 100%, so we all have to make judgements about what is an acceptable level of risk). Ugh, I hate this topic. And then you see people like the ones mentioned in the OP. Do people have no conscience?
Hmm Barbara – I guess I think that a car accident comes pretty high up on my list of things that are likely to happen (I’ve had 2 people drive into me in the last decade), and it’s easy to do as much as I can to minimise its impact. So my kids have always been in fairly highly-specced seats – in 5-point harnesses until they’ve grown out of them around 5, 5 1/2, and then high-backed boosters with the head rests. The eldest two are now tall enough – and heavy enough, which is a consideration of mine too – not to need seats.
Oh, and we got a Berlingo, which easily accommodated 3 car seats across the back, and was very cheap!
Other stuff, e.g. being abducted, is pretty low down on the list of things that *aren’t* likely to happen, and I do nothing to protect them from that at all. Everyone has to sort out their own risk assessments – but I do think an awful lot of people (e.g. the people in the OP!) do quite a poor job of it.