I’m sure this is going to be a controversial question, but I think it’s still an interesting question. We, as car enthusiasts, love any specific type of car that God decides to bestow upon us, and those cars are not always the best. The safest Cars. Whether it’s by age, design features, build quality, or something else, we often find ourselves fascinated by vehicles that we’d really rather not be in a wreck. And many of us have kids, kids we want to take places and share the joy of our car obsessions with. When the cars we own and love aren’t exactly safe, how do we reconcile that? Or are we?
Let’s be honest here, when it comes to safety, most An interesting and collectible car, it is considered, by modern standards, unsafe. Hell, almost anything before the 90s is an absolute death trap by modern standards. But it wasn’t a big deal, because parents didn’t actually start doing that love Their kids until the late 80s or so?
The ubiquitous airbags, antilock brakes, lane departure warnings, advanced crumple zones and all that kind of stuff are all relatively new. Would you take your child in a car that lacks such features?
I would like. I mean I did. And still do. I’m not saying this is a decision anyone should make (and I recognize the economic factors that may make this less of an option and more of a necessity), but it seems like this is precisely what I did. Before my son Otto was born, my car was a 1973 reliant scimitar gte, A 1973 Volkswagen Beetle, and our “modern” car, a 1982 Volkswagen Rabbit convertible. When we heard Otto was coming in 2010, we decided to sell the Rabbit and get a “modern” car, a 2000 Volkswagen Passat Wagon, with a V6 engine. AWD.
That car had airbags and was decades newer than anything we had; It seemed like a relatively responsible thing for a new parent to do. Then, the same week the boy was born, the fuel pump failed.
So, Otto’s first car journeys were restricted to a safe and approved child seat, strapped into a small, unsafe and unapproved old car of a design dating back mainly to 1938: my Beetle.
We eventually fixed up the Passat and used that too, but I drove Otto often in the Beetle, and he loved it.
It was loud, bouncy, and looked like a giant toy, which are all pluses when you’re a toddler. We drove the Beetle everywhere, although I would avoid taking him on long highway trips in it, for what they were worth.
Other parents would sometimes give me the stink eye when they saw me getting him out of that little yellow car, as they were unloading their kids from the Audi and Volvo SUVs. More than once in line for preschool I received some condescending “concerning” questions, and at least once received a brutally honest lecture suggesting that I was probably not cut out to have children at all.
Then again, plenty of other parents were happy to see an old bright yellow Beetle around, and the kids all loved them. I would let them in, honk the horn and enjoy the funny and distinct smell of the beetle. I feel like I’ve received more positive responses than negative, although I’m sure things would be completely different because, heaven forbid or hell, I actually had a serious accident with him in the car.
Even though I’ve driven my child in an objectively unsafe car for years, and still do, I’m at a loss: Am I a bad parent? Am I selfish? Was the fun we had together in the car and the way the car brought us together, and gave my son an appreciation for cars, was that worth the risk I was putting him through, perhaps?
I don’t know. I know what the technically “correct” answer is – keep your child as safe as possible, however possible – but if that is your only rule in life, you and your child will miss out on a lot, and you will probably never parent a child walking on the sidewalk or riding a bike in A public street, or climbing trees, or eating candy or pills he finds on the street, and who wants that?
I joke about found candy or pills. That’s for Adults.
By the way, I’m curious to hear all your opinions – do you take your kids in your favorite, unsafe cars? With restrictions, and if so, what are they? Am I really a bad parent, or just partly a bad parent? There is a lot to discuss here.
