Dad Drives Car With Daughter On Lap: Doctor Tweets Chilling Message
When it comes to traveling with kids in a car, we Indians don’t take things seriously. There are child seats available in the market, but you’ll hardly find anyone who uses them on a daily basis. Most carry their kids on the regular seat, without any seatbelt or safety precautions. Many still don’t know about child seats in cars. Here we have a video that recently surfaced online where a dad is seen driving a car with his daughter on his lap. The video went viral, and a doctor who came across it decided to tweet about it with a chilling message.
The video has been shared by Ashwin Rajenesh, MD, Consultant Physician & Associate Professor – Internal Medicine. In this video, we see the father driving the car with his daughter hugging him while sitting on his lap. The car is being driven on a public road as seen in the video. The child is not sleeping but simply sitting there.
We wouldn’t be surprised if the parent had made the child sit on his lap for the sake of creating a video for social media. This is extremely dangerous as both the child and the driver could get seriously injured in case of an accident.
Additionally, if you look carefully, the father or the person driving the car is actually not wearing a seatbelt. This is also a serious issue among many Indian drivers. The video went viral, and Ashwin came across it. He found the video very disturbing, and that is probably the reason why he decided to post it with this message.
He wrote, “Looks adorable. But in the event of a frontal collision and subsequent airbag deployment, the infant’s skull would be accelerated at ~320 km/hr, 6-8 inches into the man’s thoracic cage, killing both instantly. Indian parents need a harsh reality check.”
The airbags in a car are a safety feature. However, if not used in the right manner, they can easily become a weapon. The airbag on the steering wheel is usually placed under the horn pad, and that area is made from a thin plastic material. This is done to ensure that the airbag can tear through the plastic when it inflates to protect the driver or any other occupant.
An explosion happens inside the airbag that makes it expand. This is a chemical reaction, and the chemical used inside the airbag is called sodium azide. The sensor in front of the car sends electrical signals to the ignitor. The heat generated as part of the reaction causes sodium azide to decompose into sodium metal and nitrogen gas, which inflates the airbag. All this happens almost instantaneously.
If you are not wearing a seatbelt, the sensor might not trigger on time or there might be a delay. This is even more dangerous as the airbag will hit the back of the child’s head, and the explosion will push the head into the chest of the driver.
Additionally, the child would be squeezed between the steering wheel and the driver. To avoid such situations, it is always a good idea to get your child a seat in the car and wear seatbelts all the time.