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Child restraints -- one person's private opinion versus sloppy
legislation.
The webmaster, John Larkin, acting in his
private capacity has been in correspondence with the Department of
Transport since 2006 concerning seatbelts and child restraints in
historic cars. The correspondence was prompted by the dangers
created by the use of child "safety" devices that raised the child
above the installed seat level in open-topped cars exposing more of
the child's torso above the waist level of the car. I have
copied the Minister's long-awaited reply below.
Bear in mind that you do
not need to use child restraints/boosters unless seat
belts are installed.
I explained to the Minister for Transport
that a responsible and safety-conscious driver could reasonably
consider that a child would be more safely transported in an
historic car where seatbelts have been retro-fitted while restrained
only by the belts and not in conjunction with a booster seat or
similar, but that the legislation made it an offence to omit the
booster seat. I asked the Minister to exempt this type
of case from the legislation, but he has confirmed that it will
remain a requirement, and thus an offence not to comply.
This creates the bizarre situation where if, out of a desire to
aim for high standards of safety, you have fitted seatbelts to your
historic car which was never required by law to have seatbelts
fitted you will be committing an offence by not using child booster
seats even if you consider them unsafe in your particular vehicle.
However, if you remove your seatbelts completely from your car and
allow your child passengers to be thrown about unrestrained in a
collision then that's perfectly OK --- you won't be breaking the
law! I will rely on the prudence and common sense of the
courts to assess the reasonableness and sense of my thinking as a
caring father and as an informed person if I am ever charged with an
offence under this piece of sloppy legislation. The Minister
recognises the sense of using an adult seatbelt to restrain a child
without a booster in one circumstance in the main paragraph of his
letter, but fails to understand that a responsible, informed and
safety-conscious driver should also be permitted to exercise such a
discretion without being forced to weigh it up against the prospect
of prosecution.
You may also see in the letter that the Minister states that
children may only be carried in the rear seats of cars not fitted
with seatbelts. What about two-seater cars? In
1978 when compulsory wearing of seatbelts was first proposed I was
driving a two-seater car (which I still have and use). I wrote to the
Minister at that time and explained that I regularly drove my then
ten year-old brother to school lawfully in my two-seater car, but
that the proposed legislation would make it illegal to carry him in
the front (and only) passenger seat in my car. Cheekily I asked
the Minister to confirm that I should instead carry him strapped to
the car's roof rack in order not to be breaking the law as proposed.
The Minister of the time subsequently, and sensibly, exempted two-seater cars
from the particular requirement. The present Minister appears to have
been badly advised by his staff if the fourth sentence of the third
paragraph of his letter is meant to be understood as prohibiting
children from being carried in the front seat of two-seater cars.
Whither common sense?
These opinions expressed
above are not the opinions of the IVVCC; they are the personal
opinions of the webmaster John Larkin. This website is merely
the forum on which this matter of public interest has been made
known.

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