Eighteen years ago, I was privileged to travel to Cape Town, South Africa. It wasn’t my first trip but my second, having earlier visited Pretoria. Both trips were sponsored. In naija parlance, we call it awoof (free gift) The trip was an eye opener on concrete and enduring interventions to protect lives, especially of children.

The trip to Cape Town in South Africa was for a training programme that also involved a tour of some neighborhoods to assess the effectiveness of specific interventions. During one of such tours, I saw volunteers provide traffic calming measures to protect black kids in a black neighborhood in Gordon’s Bay. 

These volunteers refused to sit on the fence, but rather took a stand to protect the group we all call the leaders of tomorrow. Back home, the reverse is the case as we leave everything to God, instead of taking a stand to protect children whose birth we all gladly celebrate with so much partying. 

As a parent or guardian, do you know of the provisions of section 58(4) of the National Road Traffic Regulations, 2004 which makes it mandatory for all occupants of a vehicle to use a seatbelt for their safety? Do you know that this provision covers children, also? 

Whenever, I focus on the dangerous trend of transporting children wrongly, I reflect on what obtains in developed clime where a new born child must be transported in the appropriate car seat from the first day. I therefore, rhetorically ask readers if they are parents or guardians because of the increasing unsafe practices by parents and guardians especially women or better still, mothers which to me is ironic and strange.

Daily, I see mothers especially during school ‘runs’ carrying children under twelve years in the front passenger seat, and sometimes two children of that age are dumbed in the front seat. To further complicate this risk driving behavior, the mother adds this dangerous transportation of their precious children by also using their phone which distracts and impairs.

Whenever I stress these questions, I merely seek to challenge your consciousness to the dangers we expose our children to, despite our claim that we love and cherish them so much. Most of us who have heeded the Federal Road Safety Corps’ call to use seat belts, unfortunately do not see any sense in protecting our children while driving by strapping them. 

Some lap them. Others leave them unattended in moving vehicles. Some claim strapping these kids in a car seat is alien. This group maintains that strapping children in a car is meant for the white man, not a black man. Some say it is meant for the rich and wealthy while for some, it is a status symbol habit for those striving to flaunt their class.

For some others, the cost for a car seat is high even though the cheapest among the cars they drive cost at least five million naira. Other cars go for as high as sixty or hundreds of million naira, compared to car seats whose cost can’t even buy the tyres for these cars. Even if car seats were as expensive as tyres, would that be too much   for the protection of the life of God’s precious gift?

Yet, these same parents would not mind hanging out with friends and business partners to spend thousands on drinks, pepper soup and other extras. The female ones would prefer spending thousands or millions of naira on designer shoes and bags, but not on the safety of their children. These self-centered choices that parents make, to me, are absurd, to say the least.

I believe that Child safety should remain the passion of every parent, including would-be parents. It has been over fifteen years since the Federal Road Safety Corps came up with the seat belt driving culture novelty. Yet,  a greater percentage of parents and guardians don’t care about child safety. Daily, these children, whether in school buses or family vehicles, are transported without any iota of safety.

Over the years, Child Passenger Safety campaign   themes such as, “Don’t kill the Child, Kill the Bad habit” aimed at raising safety awareness on children’s safety were born. This is because, Road safety crisis is the leading cause of preventable death; the 3rd largest cause of disabilities. 

It is the 2nd largest cause of death after Aids/HIV in Africa. In the same Africa, there is generally no costing data making the cost of crashes difficult to estimate except for a few countries. A study has shown that 10percent of global road deaths occurred in Africa though only 4percent of world’s registered vehicles are in the continent. 

This study posits that if reporting of road crashes were to improve, the road crash index in the Continent will be different as it most likely would show more deaths. South Africa and Nigeria, according to this study, account for most of the reported deaths.

These deaths, according to the study, are caused mostly by human error, and vehicle factors that include the following; over speeding, dangerous overtaking, alcohol and drug abuse, negligence of drivers, poor driving standards and overloaded people or goods vehicles. Others include poor tyre maintenance, burst tyre, bad roads and hilly terrain, negligence of pedestrians, distraction of drivers by passengers as well as cell phone use among others.

For emphasis again, road traffic injuries alone are the leading cause of death among children 15-19 years and the second leading cause among 10-14 years old. These injuries are not inevitable. They are preventable. Ironically most parents are not concerned, going by their actions behind the wheels. Signs of these concerns are legion.

Sometimes, I wonder if most parents are conversant with the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by our government. Or the Child’s Right Act (CRA) of 2003, also designed to protect children’s rights in Nigeria which aligns with the UN Conventions on the Right of the Child. 

These Acts simply state that children have a right to a safe environment, and to protection from injury and violence. They stress the responsibilities of society to protect children (from birth up to the age of 18years). For another emphasis, even the 2000 United Nations Millennium Development Goals resolution sets as its fourth goal the need to reduce by two thirds the mortality rates of children under the age of 5 years.

Also, the United Nations General Assembly, 2002, “A World Fit for Children” document, set out a number of health goals for children. One of such goals which is specific to injuries calls on all Member States to, “reduce child injuries due to accidents or other causes through the development and implantation of appropriate measures.” Annually, the WHO and UNICEF   call for greatly expanded global efforts to prevent child injury.

In addition, the WHO/UNICEF World report on Child injury prevention, reminds us yearly that every day around the world, hundreds of families are torn apart by the loss of a child to an unintentional injury or so-called “accidents” that could have been prevented, lamenting that children’s injuries have been neglected for many years.

Children’s maturity and their interest and needs differ from adults, the report further stated. Therefore; simply reproducing injury prevention strategies that are relevant to adults does not adequately protect children, it warned. The report affirmed that there are proven interventions such as child seats which is the trust of this piece.

Others include, cycling helmets, child- resistant packaging for medications, fencing around swimming pools, hot water tap temperature regulations and window guards, to name a few. The above is proof that children, your children rank high in the vulnerable user graph? 

In countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States of America, for instance, the authorities are concerned by the need to protect vulnerable road users, particularly children. Parents, especially mothers, should show greater restraint in the unsafe practices they indulge in while conveying children. 

Motor crashes remain the leading cause of unintentional injury related deaths among children ages 14 and under. However, the wearing of seatbelts could prevent many of these deaths and serious injuries. Thus, over the last 25 years, it is conservatively estimated that in highly motorized countries about 310,000 fatalities and more than million moderate to critical injuries have been prevented through wearing of seatbelts (car restraints) especially for children. 

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