Need for speed with a baby on board

One of my pleasures on this earth is driving. It’s a thing that I enjoy and I can do it for hours and hours. There are a few other things that I can do like that but this post isn’t about that.

As a younger driver, I had a bit of a need for speed. I think a lot of people go through that. I loved speeding and the highway was my favorite place to feel the speed at the tip of my feet.

Fast forward and now I’m a dad. Going from a need for speed to a need for safety. The day I took my kid home, after he was born, was the slowest road trip I ever took. I was so slow people mistook me for a grandparent or a kid taking driving lessons. Trying to avoid every bump in the road and every car on the street.

At that time it was mostly an instinct. Later on, I found out just how fragile babies are. Infants and children are not miniature adults. Body size proportions, muscle bone and ligaments strengths are different.

The child’s head is relatively massive and supported poorly from below and might lead to head snapping with rapid body deceleration. Contributing to brain injuries of the young child is the relative lack of skull protection since the skull is not an intact bony case.

The organs of the chest are housed in an elastic and highly compressible thoracic cage. Organs as the lungs and heart are extremely vulnerable to non penetrating impacts to the chest.

Now that I scared you a bit, please consider buying a safe child seat. Rear-facing ones are safer in the early years of the kid. And if you need to, feed your need for speed without the baby on board.