Musing about driving

Couple of moms in the AP group are talking about carseats, how safe it is to be belted up, every child should be in the carseat etc. The issue of ILs taking a ride in the car, squeezing in without seat belts etc also came up. One mother fretted about ILs coming into the car for road-trips up north and another maintained she would not give ILs a ride but take a taxi instead. If I tried that often enough, I think one day KH would call my bluff and say: ok lor, you take the taxi lah! Wah, then you'd see fireworks!!

But I digress. I sense (and my gut feel is seldom off) that a lot of this is really due to IL politics more than safety issues. :-)

I can understand the rationale behind belting up. I even agree with it. But the practicalities/ politics of life still apply right?

In my car, we have one baby seat, one booster seat, five children and two adults. I have to confess here that I am one of those 'irresponsible parents' because Trinity travels in my lap. We just don't have space for another carseat. We have a 7-seater MPV, yes. But even then, it is a tight squeeze for all of us. On days when the helper comes along, eg on Sundays when we go to church for mass, you should see the squeeze in the middle row.

But isn't it dangerous? I can hear the nay-sayers gasp. Yes it is. Am I putting my baby's life at risk? Others will huff. Yes I am. Am I being irresponsible? Yes to that too. Did I not see the extremely touching videos on YouTube of toddlers who died because they were not belted up or belted up but with the wrong 'type' of seatbelt? Yes I did and I have to confess I even sniffled at some parts.

I plead 'guilty' to all the charges of irresponsibility. But short of striking Big Sweep and buying a bigger car or a van, I don't quite have a choice in this. Even riding in a taxi isn't safe. Even riding in a bus isn't safe. Nor is a train. Those, of course, are not good excuses for not belting up. But what I am saying is, there are times when we just have to live with the constraints and practicalities of the situation. And fatalistic though this may sound, I believe that do what you will, when death chooses to claim you, it will. Nothing about it being unfair, about not taking responsibility, about poor timing, about assigning blame etc. Death just is. Tragic though it can be at times, it will happen.

So no matter how many vitamins we pop, how many miles we run, how many mammograms we go for, how carefully we count the numbers of french fries our children eat, how many times we look over our shoulder, no matter how faithfully we belt up, how many times we look for a child running ahead of us in a crowded place, I hate to say it but s**t still happens. Children still drown in a crowded pool, toddlers still get kidnapped off a beach somewhere, babies get flung out of cars, healthy young men still die in their sleep, motorcyclists still die on the road when idiotic and callous drivers hit them, run over them and drive off (there are unmentionable words for people like that but this is not the time or place). S**t happens. And the rest of us just got to deal with it, live with it, carry on, wondering why and wondering how we can make the world safer for our babies and ourselves. When the underlying fact is, we really can't. We just do the best we can with what we know, with the resources we have.

I'm rambling.

Some of my best childhood memories are of me standing in the backseat of my grandad's old car, windows down, wind whipping in, trees blurring past as we zip through the kampong-lined, veggie field laden back roads of old Tampines to Changi beach. The sternest warning was to keep our hands in the car and not caress the breeze by waggling it out of the window - tempting though it was. And of course stern hisses to: "Shh be quiet! Your grandad's driving! Let him concentrate!" (but of course to my grandma, having the car radio on at full blast would not affect grandad's concentration in the least!)

KH remembers those days when his dad used to pack him and his four siblings into a car and head back to Malaysia on the dusty trunk roads. Zooming back, children tightly squashed against each other, sweaty and hot in a Datsun 120Y. Those were the days of tailgating, big trucks/lorries lumbering on the trunk roads, daredevil overtaking on single-lane carriage ways. Not saying that this was safe or good. It just was done that way.

Life had fewer rules back then. But somehow, it seemed happier.

For now though, my tiny MPV will just hold who or what it can- belt or not belt, carseat or no, and if this means the ILs take a ride elsewhere, or can't come with us on road trips up north, well, I can't say I am displeased. Now can I? ;-)