As if we didn’t have enough to worry about in the car – milk sippies being chucked at our heads, abandoned french fries lurking under the carseat, and the road rage caused by too little sleep and too many screaming toddlers.
Now it’s the car windows we have to think about – or what’s hanging out of them.
A San Francisco area first grader lost her hand earlier this month when the jump rope dangling from the window of her mom’s Chevy Suburban got caught up in the wheel well. The other end of the rope was wrapped around the wrist of little Erica Rix, and as the spinning wheels pulled the rope tighter and tighter . . . the result was so gruesome I’m still shivering. One motorist found the hand in the highway while another fashioned a tourniquet with his belt to stop the blood flow. The hand has been reattached, but Erica will need more surgeries before she regains feeling and mobility in the appendage.
What jumped out at me about this story is the fact that the car window wasn’t technically to blame in this accident. A recent report focused on the dangers to kids posed by the power behind a power window showed 87 percent of parents fail to recognize the risk. The windows can exert 40 to 80 pounds of pressure, and it takes just 20 pounds to kill a child according to Janette Fennel of Kids and Cars.
All true, but the answer to that one is simple – the window locks next to the driver’s seat in most of today’s cars should be engaged to stop a child from accidentally shutting the window on a finger, hand or (eek) their neck.
What parents really need to teach their kids is the same thing they’re told on every amusement park ride in the country – please keep all hands and feet inside the vehicle as long as it’s in motion. Heads, hands, even jump ropes, don’t belong outside the window. A low-hanging limb can just as easily take a kid’s hand when the two connect at 65 miles per hour.
Now imagine that’s their eye because you told them to hang their head out the window so they didn’t throw up on your upholstery. Somehow a little upchuck doesn’t seem so bad, does it?
Image: CogDogBlog
