When did the safety bug bite you? I’m guessing you’re here reading the blog because somewhere along the line you became interested in seat belts or vehicle safety or your child’s safety. But have you always been a safety-minded individual or did something happen to make you that way?
I’ve always been a rule-follower. Sure, there were the typical childhood transgressions. I fondly remember sneaking off from the rest of the group with my friend as we were walking back to daycare from Kindergarten. We had gotten into a “my mom can make better chicken noodle soup”/”no my grandmother can make better chicken noodle soup” standoff and we set off to my house many miles away to really make sure my grandmother could make the better soup (from a Campbell’s can, lol!). We managed to elude police cars and frantic parents’ cars until we were almost to my house before we were caught. Not bad for two 5 year olds! Um, chicken noodle soup was *not* on the menu that evening.
Then there was that time I refused to come inside after my grandmother requested my presence (my mom and I lived with my grandmother so my mom could work the 3p-11p shift as a nurse). She just locked the door so I couldn’t come in the house. Haha! Lesson learned and a good parenting trick up my sleeve.
The next time I remember not following the rules was 6 weeks to the day after I received my driver’s license. I called my best friend and we agreed to meet at her house. Oh, but I had a gut feeling about something. Trust your gut feelings folks! When I got to her house, we decided to go to the store to buy . . . toilet paper! Yeah, ’cause two 16 year old girls need loads of toilet paper, right? We picked up another girl and drove by the infamous Matt’s house (Remember him? He wrote the 2 Guest Wednesday blogs.) where he was with some of his friends. Thrown toilet paper and a crashed car later, I’ve vowed to walk the straight and narrow. It just doesn’t pay to break the rules. I always get caught :D. Plus, we played with a car and lost. Even though we were going pretty slow (the cop thought we were going under 15 mph, but I was accelerating), my best friend, who was in the process of buckling her belt, slammed into the dashboard and pushed the glovebox so far in, we couldn’t open it. She also sprained her wrist. The girl in the back seat had a nice concussion, probably from hitting the front seat head restraint or B pillar. She was not restrained. I was restrained, but felt like crap from the other two being injured and having to tell my mother her ride was out of commission.
I look back at decisions I’ve made in my life and I’ve always been the cautious one. When I first learned that seat belts were there for our safety (no one in my family ever used them), I started wearing them and pestered my mom to wear hers as well. Aha! We need to go after the kids to get to their parents, don’t we??? I’ve never wanted to touch the hot pot on the stove, cross a busy street, etc. My 8 yr old ds is the same way. He’s always gone to Safe Kids meetings with me when he wasn’t in school and I call him my “Safe Kid.” He always wears a bike helmet, uses a booster seat without a fuss, and comments about other kids when they should be in car seats (“She’s not safe! She should use a booster.”). It’ll be interesting to watch the choices he makes as he grows.
So, have you always been the “safe kid” or is it just since your “safe kid” was born?
I’ve usually followed the rules, making only minor infractions and usually getting caught. My dad was always big on seatbelts, he even would install them (lap only back in the day) on cars that we had that didn’t come with them, and wearing them was mandatory.
I totaled my car though, driving home from college one year for Christmas (the guys who left their disabled car in the fast lane, facing on-coming traffic, in the dark, with no lights on–the headlights had been damaged as they spun repeated through the oleanders dividing the highway–, no flares/warning triangles, and were hijacking a good samaritan at (fake) gunpoint for a ride home–they were bright guys!–, etc were NOT following many of the rules, they were drunk and driving w/out a valid license, the guy in front of me swerved last minute and I ended up hitting the 65ish Mustang with my 91 Grand Am and pushing it at least 20 feet down the freeway). I think that is where my car safety obsession comes in.
I still grip the steering wheel white knuckled driving down the Autostrada or the Autobahn here in Europe. And I had flashbacks of my crash for a long time after. I was happy to move to Okinawa 9 months after my crash, where the fastest speed limit was in the neighborhood of 35 mph lol.
Then we had kids, and the selection of infant seats on our overseas base was horrible (though I didn’t know just HOW bad till a year later when I became obsessed~~we had a Cosco Arriva installed with a lap only belt with a locking clip, our other option was the Evenflo On My Way). When I needed a new seat after the infant seat, I got an AO and after I became disgruntled with that seat I really got into CPS and actually understood *why* someone would pay $200 for a Britax Roundabout (the only Britax at the time!).
oh, I was willing to drive… but I was a much more cautious driver because of it… and I also became one of the “nerds” about requiring everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) to buckle up when I drove (and I usually did… yep… only one who not only had a car… that I had to share with my sister… and who was willing to not drink or take other stuff that would prevent safe driving)
I think those videos just made it clear to me how important it was to drive defensively, to not be so worried about time that you don’t let someone merge, stuff that can cause those accidents in a heartbeat.
Yeah, those driver’s ed crash videos. We used to walk out of driver’s ed with shell-shocked looks on our faces because there’s no way some of those movies could be faked. Kind of like the anti-drug movies they showed us in 8th grade–you can’t fake a collapsed vein being pulled out of a druggie’s arm.
I’m surprised any of us drive after seeing those movies.
You know, I was pretty much a rule follower, but I think the safety bug bit me when I took driver’s ed and they told us about the chances of a crash, the percentage rates of them, and showed us a bunch of videos of crashes.
I always wore my seatbelt from that time on.
But it went to another level when I became a mother.
I wasn’t attuned to safety at all until DS#1 turned about a year and I had a hard time finding a carseat that would install correctly. It just sort of took off after that and expanded into Safe Kids.
I was raised by a family practitioner and a pediatric nurse. I grew up reading medical journals. And then I had kids.
‘Nuff said…
I, too, have always been a rule follower for the most part. I’ve also always been a safety nut (and not just w/ car safety). I was the kid crying “don’t move the car, I’m going to die!” if one of my parents tried to leave before I was buckled.