Teaching safety by example

[glbirch]

(Step up on soapbox.)

Nearly every day in the summer, I'll see a family biking. All the children are wearing helmets, but not the parents. They'll buckle the kids into the car, but not use the seatbelt themselves. Kids get life jackets, but the parents don't wear them (Boat tips, both parents drown, children survive. Happened last week: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1089225270247_84634470/?hub=TopStories )

So what are we teaching our kids? That safety gear is something to be endured until you are an adult? Or until you're out of site of the parents? Happens all the time at the skateboard park near my house. Parents drop the kids off with all the gear. As soon as the car drives away, gear comes off.

Can't we do better than this as parents?

(Step down from soapbox.)

 

[MikeFerrara]

Things change I guess. Back when I was riding a bike I hadn't ever heard of or seen any one wearing a helmet. Our out of school time was spent bike riding, football tree climbing and even fighting. No safety gear for any of it. Heck you would have needed full armor and climbing gear. LOL. Of course not all cars had seatbelts either and nobody used the ones that were there.

 

[Quarrior]

Let's take it one step further if nobody minds. How about the parents that hold their kids hands while crossing a busy street in the middle of the block instead of at the intersection where the light and crosswalks are? This one really gets to me.

 

[RIDIVER501]

Safety only seems to be stressed so that the blame finger can be pointed elsewhere when something bad happens.

When I was in the Navy, My commanding officers would gather us up before every major holiday and give us the don't drink and drive speech and feel satisfied and content that he had done his part in keeping us safe...So when there was a drinking and driving incident he could point the finger down the chain to the Next level.

Your safety is ultimately your own responsibility. But I agree we, as a culture, need to set the example. buckle up, wear the helmet, plan the dive with RDP's and not be hypocritical about it.

 

[MikeFerrara]

Let's take it one step further if nobody minds. How about the parents that hold their kids hands while crossing a busy street in the middle of the block instead of at the intersection where the light and crosswalks are? This one really gets to me.

Where I live you'd have to go at least 6 miles to get to the nearest intersection with a cross walk. Oh you said busy street. We don't have any of those. LOL

 

[Mako Mark]

Good point Mike, and (with the exception of life jackets) there is an interesting reverse feedback phenomenom with safety gear. A great example are both car air bags, and seat belts. The air bags and seatbelts have made the driver feel more safe, therefor more willing to drive faster under marginal conditions and accept a level of risk that may previously been deemed unacceptable.

Thus safety devices do not reduce morbidity and mortality. Before the common use of seatbelts and airbags, there was an unacceptable percieved risk of driving a hundred miles an hour (for most sane humans), nowadays that percieved risk seems far more acceptable.

Helmets on a pushbike? I kinda see that as extreemism and I personally feel like an idiot wearing them. Until they start designing them with great big viking horns or rasta dreadlocks on them, I will use all the bike riding skill I have used in the past to keep my head from making contact with the pavement.

Bike helmet laws are a particular peeve of mine as I guess you can see.

Sheesss, whats next?? training wheel laws?? Gimme a break.

Some things should be left to personal judgement and common sence.

 

[FreeFloat]

When I was in the Navy, My commanding officers would gather us up before every major holiday and give us the don't drink and drive speech and feel satisfied and content that he had done his part in keeping us safe...So when there was a drinking and driving incident he could point the finger down the chain to the Next level.

Interesting......... not terribly proactive. I've served with at least one unit that feels a better solution was to lay on a transport with an 'on-duty' (non driking) driver assigned to drive the "drunk bus".......... nowadays it's almost a standard that for mess dinners and such there will be at least one run of drunk bus. Of course, if you miss the bus because you're not done drinking when it leaves, that becomes your problem.

[Edit = In re reading my reply and your original I'm sure you meant before the whole holiday period, not just any unit-run holiday events. I was referring to the latter]

Back on topic:

True about the "do as I say not as I do" attitude. My chief beef has to do as well with people who don't even bother to apply safety rules to their children. I've passed vehicles on the highway where the kids were climbing all over the backseat.......

 

[RIDIVER501]

oh, the duty driver thing was done when on liberty in ports other then out home port, but for the holidays like X-mas and such where the crew was scattering to the four winds. A simple speech was supposed to suffice.

 

[FreeFloat]

Keep in mind though that nowadays there's sort of a "panic mode" about "protecting" kids in every possible way. Not that I disagree with seatbelts, bike helmets, lifejackets, etc, but sometimes the pendulum swings too far. Playgrounds are being torn down because the steel aparatus that have entertained kids for generations are being deemed "unsafe" and they are being replaced (when they're even replaced) by weird shaped plastic formed structures that are so "safe" they're boring. Kids aren't being allowed to climb trees, etc. Where I used to live was a family where the mother would walk beside her daughter whenever the daughter would ride her bike down the paved laneway........the daughter was 10 or 12 years old.

Jeepers Creepers how are kids supposed to experience anything these days when everything comes pre-sanitized and tamed down for them?? It's no wonder they grow up without any appreciation for risk!!!

just my 2psi............"feel free to breathe it or leave it in the tank", as someone else once said

 

[MikeFerrara]

Bike helmet laws are a particular peeve of mine as I guess you can see.

Sheesss, whats next?? training wheel laws?? Gimme a break.

Some things should be left to personal judgement and common sence.

Bike helmet laws? I didn't know about those. What kind of a spineless society would even accept such a thing?



I couldn't believe it when they passed seat belt laws...I'll bet burglers love all the seatbelt road blocks they set up everyplace on the weekend. As a taxpayer I'd rather they park a cop in front of my property to keep an eye on things while I'm not there. I don't give a darn who wears a seatbelt and who doesn't.