Do you keep your kids safe in your car and driveway?
Parents often face a battle when it is time to travel with young children. For some, even a trip to the local grocery store takes a lot of patience and effort. Keeping your kids safe while you are driving takes a plan. Fortunately, there are some simple ways that you can help to keep them safe.
It is critical that you don’t fall into the habit of thinking that safety is less important because you aren’t traveling far from home. You might not realize it, but these short trips can be more dangerous because you might let your guard down. Whether you are driving your child to school or taking a long trip, you need to make sure that you are keeping safety a priority in your vehicle. Here are a few tips to get you started:
- Take your time: Rushing to an appointment or somewhere else is almost like an invitation for trouble. When you are trying to hurry, you might not realize that a child isn’t strapped in correctly or you may allow behavior that you normally wouldn’t. These can all cause issues with safety.
- Have your kids buckle up: Everyone in the vehicle should be buckled up. Even though some children pitch fits when they have to buckle up, you can’t allow them to leave without being strapped into a child safety seat or seat belt. You also shouldn’t give your child the option of choosing whether to use a child seat or not. If the height, weight and age mean that a seat is necessary, your child must be in one.
- Teach children to play quietly: Drivers need to pay attention to their driving duties. With this in mind, there isn’t a way that a driver can focus on the road when there are children screaming and carrying on in the vehicle. If your children do start acting up while you are driving, pull over as soon as it is safe and stay put until things calm down.
- Driveways are very dangerous: The driveway may be a common place for your children to play and have fun, but it is a very unsafe place for them to be. Far too many children are injured or killed in their own driveways. Drivers who are coming and going at a home where children are playing outside need to watch carefully for the children before moving a vehicle. Even at slow speeds, a child can be seriously injured.
Unfortunately, even if you take every possible precaution, accidents do happen. Do what you can to stay safe for the sake of your children and others.