Car Safety

Recently, we got a new car. It's a carbon-gray Mazda 6 station wagon. But no, this post is not about the car's Bose sound system or leather seats - it's about a rather standard feature called the isofix.

The isofix is a standard adopted in new European cars for the attachment of baby seats. Most baby seats are currently attached to the passenger seat with seat belts. The isofix however is inbuilt into the frame of the car and an isofix babyseat simply clicks in place. Why is that safer than baby seats fixed with seat belts? Firstly, despite the best intentions of parents, most of the latter are attached wrongly as studies have shown. Secondly, a baby seat fixed with seat belt is still going to jerk forward in a crash compared to an isofix baby seat with a lot less forward motion.

Of course, having a baby seat (whether it's attached with an isofix or seat belt) is better than having none at all. It irks me that most back seat passengers in Singapore do not take seat belts seriously. Old habits die hard or plain ignorance/stupidity? Possibly a combination of all 3. What people don't realize is that at a leisurely speed of 50 km/h, a 10kg baby will become a 500kg force - similar to the weight of a baby elephant. On impact, this baby elephant then becomes a projectile (or rocket, if you will) that will very likely either crash through the windshield or seriously maim the front passenger. On a highway speed of 80 km/h, a child weighing 20kg has a force of 1600kg.

This is plain physics - Newton's First Law of Motion. Therefore, it's also plain common sense that a child should be restrained in an age-appropriate child seat or seat belts and not in the 'loving arms' of grandparents. Similarly, all backseat passengers ought to have the common sense to buckle up - if you don't think it will happen to you, why then do you buy insurance?

M, still huge
39 weeks and 1 day