Kids are great. To many people the are even cute; but they can also be incredibly distracting if you are trying to drive but can t focus 100 percent on what you re doing because you are too busy trying to make sure that your one year old isn t going to spit up what he just ate all over your back seat. Often times, parents (while they are as well intentioned as they want to be) wind up causing accidents with other vehicles.
Three days ago, I was driving back to my apartment when I must have had at least three minivans packed with kids zip right by me so fast that I pondered whether or not they were driving or flying down the street. Isn t that horrible? Again, where were the police officers when all of this was going on, and why wasn t anything being done about it?
If you are going to drive on the road with children, there are several things that you to keep your sanity as well as keep other drivers on the road safe from your motherly duties. If you have ever seen the movie Defending Your Life, you will know that in the very beginning of the movie, the thing that winds up killing him is because he has just rounded a corner and all of his cds have spilled on to the floor beneath the front passenger seat of his vehicle. Subsequently, he bends over (while driving, mind you) to pick up the scattered cds, and when he comes back up, he realizes that he is now driving down the wrong side of the road. Before he has time to properly react, he then realizes that he is about to plow head first into a bus. The same thing can and does happen with many people especially parents of young children.
In order to placate children, parents will often buy a portable dvd player to set up in the back seat of the car so that their children may stay engaged in a program suited for them. Still other parents will load up their vehicles with an excess or overabundance of toys and other child like paraphernalia only to realize that they have made a grave mistake once the first toy gets shot in their direction while driving. If you have small children, unless you glance in the mirror and see that there is a major problem, then you really should focus your energies on the road. If it turns out that there is, indeed a real medical emergency, then you should pull your vehicle over quickly and safely so that you may address the issue with your full attention. If you realize that a child may need medical attention, then this is also another key item that you will want to make sure that you give your full attention to, and you cannot do it while operating a motor vehicle.
Traveling with children can be a fun experience as long as you know what your role is: both driver and caregiver, but not at the same time!