Seatbelts Save

As a former seat belt naysayer, I can understand why some people don't like wearing them.

Children, however, are a different story.

I was on my way home the other day when I look behind me and see two adults in the front seat without safety belts. I get it. I know they're wrong, but I used to be them.

Then I saw the child, no older than five years old, bouncing up and down in the back seat. The adults weren't scolding him. They were laughing and they were handing him things as he leaned forward into the front seat area to get them.

What a bunch of idiots.

If you don't want to wear a seat belt and you really want to wrap your head around your dashboard, that's your business, but that child is depending on parents who know how to use the brain in their currently intact skull.

Fighting words? Maybe, but basically if you don't properly restrain your child in a safety seat or with a seat belt, or at least do the best you can to meet compliance, you're a BAD parent.

There are even a number of areas around Ohio that will check your child's safety seat for you and help you install it properly. 

There's no gray area here, folks. Regardless of whether your love for your children includes saving your own life so you can be there for them, you should make sure you do everything in your power to keep your children healthy and alive in the event you do something stupid on the road or someone else does.

I was driving down Ohio 199 the other day and slammed on my brakes just as some moron ran a stop sign at a high rate of speed. I was lucky. If I'd been hit, I may still have been lucky because I was wearing a seat belt.

If that group behind me had been hit? We'd have three more obituaries in the paper.

If I can't convince you to save yourself, please please please, at least save your children.

~Chandra