Let’s talk today a little bit about safety tips for driving with your children. Make sure, first of all, the first safety tip and probably the most important one is that before you begin the trip that your child is safely buckled into the car seat. A lot of times the child will go ahead and undo the seat belt itself and that will cause you as a parent to have to turn your neck around, turn your arm around and then go ahead and try to buckle up while driving which, of course, leads to a huge problem. Because as we know, if a parent or adult is driving with children in the car, that means on the average according to the studies, they are taking their eyes off the road 20% of the time.
If the child is less than 57 inches tall and under eight years old, then the child has to remain in the backseat in a booster seat. If the child is at least 40 pounds and at least eight years of age and there is no back seat in the vehicle, then the child can ride in the front seat. If the child is less than 12 years old, the general rule is that they should probably be in the back seat and, of course, you never ever want to have just like you wouldn’t want to have with a pet, a pet or a child to be sitting on your lap while you’re driving. If you have questions about any of these matters, please call my office at 770-792-1000.