Tag Archives: children

Car Crashes Kill More Children than the Flu, or Keeping Influenza Dangers in Perspective

He may not like the flu shot. But it keeps him safe. And he’s at a much lower risk of death from the flu than he is from a crash.

Part of making informed decisions as a parent is making sure you’ve got the information in hand before you make the decision. Today we’ll talk briefly about two significant threats in children’s lives in the United States: road trauma, or car crashes, and the flu, or the influenza virus. One of these threats is more insidious, while the other is more temporal.

We hear about the dangers of car crashes fairly often, but for a variety of reasons, including our country’s tacit acceptance of the risks of driving as inevitable and immutable, we don’t pay much attention to them unless they involve us, people we know, or stores that receive high amounts of coverage on the nigthly or online news (e.g., the death of Princess Diana, which actually led to increases in suicides among women who self-identified with her). The flu, on the other hand, is generally ignored for about half of the year and thought of significantly during the other half, particularly when school-aged children attend public school systems or when news reports announce spikes in infection, hospitalization, or death rates.

However, as a reader of the CCD, you’re well aware that not everything that receives media attention is worth its coverage, and that a great many things ignored by the general population may be essential to our well being. Let’s take a quick look at the relative risks of children dying from road trauma (car crashes) vs the flu (influenza). The summary is that your child is around 4 times as likely to die from a motor vehicle during the flu season months (October to May) than she is to die from the flu, and that this rate balloons to 6 times that of the flu if the total number of child car deaths is compared to the annual total of flu deaths.

How many children die from the flu in the US in a typical year?

While the number of child influenza deaths reported to the CDC vary significantly from year to year (e.g., 110 in 2016-17, 188 in 2017-18, 144 in 2018-19, and 105 as of February 21st, 2019 in the 2019-20 season), the number lately has fallen between 110 and 188. Let’s use last year’s total of 144. Let’s also keep in mind that the flu season is generally acknowledged as spanning October through May, or 8 months (2/3rds) of the year.

How many children typically die from car crashes in the US in a typical year?

From a recent article, we know that 880 children under 13 died in 2018 from road trauma; this figure also floats up and down from year to year, but has generally ranged between a high of 1033 in 2016 and a low of 875 in 2014; every total since 2010 has fallen between these two boundaries.

Which is more dangerous, the flu or car crashes, for the average American child?

Comparing the numbers makes it clear that, while both of these dangers are meaningful, one poses far more of a risk, statistically speaking, than the other. When prorated by 2/3rds to represent the 8 month flu season, a child was approximately 4 times as likely to die from car crashes (880 * 2/3 = 587) as she was from the flu (144) in 2018. When the full tallies of both risks are compared, the same child was more than 6 times as likely to die from road trauma as she was from influenza.

This does not mean that the flu is not dangerous. It is. It kills tens of thousands of adults each year in the United States and a good 100 or more children die needlessly each year as well.

This does not mean that flu vaccines are unnecessary. They are. Vaccines overall are among the most important inventions we’ve ever come up with as human beings. I absolutely recommend the flu vaccine for children. Even if they end up with flu-like symptoms or infections, they’re significantly less likely to suffer severe symptoms or complications. This is basic information, but it bears repeating, especially since there’s a strong anti-intellectual streak running through the country with anti-vaccine propaganda leading to decreased immunization rates.

However, with all that in mind, the flu is not the bigger risk of the two for the vast majority of children in the United States (or around the world). Road trauma is. Six children die in the United States due to car crashes for every child who dies due to flu complications.

How do we protect our kids from the flu and from car crash fatalities?

To reduce your risks of flu illnesses, vaccinate your children. Beyond that, teach them to wash their hands (or do so for them if they’re young). Practice cough covering and sneeze covering. And above all, stay home and rest if sick. These tips apply equally to children and adults.

When it comes to car safety, it’s even simpler: if your child is under 5, rear-face her and don’t stop until she’s 5 and has outgrown her seat. Once she has, booster her until she’s at least 10 and has passed the five step test. And if she’s under 18, don’t let her drive without you.

You don’t have to check to make sure your child fits in one of these categories more than a few times a year unless she’s about to move from one category to the next. The hard part is making–and keeping–the three decisions to keep your child in safe configurations when everyone around you is forward-facing at 1 or 2, strapping their kids in seat belts at 7 or 6 or 5, and encouraging them to drive everywhere, all the time, and with as many passengers as possible from the day they’re legally allowed to at 16 (or 15, or 14 in certain states).

Follow best practices. Ignore foolish ones. That’s how you get everyone home at night.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.

 

Jillian Brown, Evenflo, Booster Seats, and Best Practices

What happened to Jillian was a tragedy. But Evenflo was not necessarily the cause of it.

For the last six years on the CCD, we’ve talked about pretty much nothing but best practices. Along the way, we’ve also looked at a number of crashes that have sadly resulted in environments where best practices just aren’t practiced. A story I came across today involves that of Jillian Brown, now 8, who was internally decapitated in 2016 as a 5-year old when involved in a side impact crash along with her mother, Lindsey, and sister, Samantha. Without knowing all of the details of the case, I’m going to take a look at it from the perspective of the crash analysis itself, her car seat configuration, what we know about best practices, and which factors could and could not have led to different outcomes. The goal here isn’t to place blame on Evenflo, the family, or US laws and customs. As always, it’s to figure out the difference between what’s being done and what would be done if best practices were followed, and to advocate for the latter.  Let’s go.

What were the circumstances of the crash, and what factors did the vehicles play in them?

First of all, this was a side impact crash. As we’ve discussed in a myriad of articles, these are the most severe kinds of crashes you can be involved in  (vs frontal and rear crashes). This is why I’ve written article after article comparing side impact penetration levels in vehicular crash tests, why I advocate placing the most vulnerable children (by age or car restraint) in the center seats, and why I talk endlessly about the importance of Vision Zero-based road designs that limit vehicle speeds to survivable crash energies.

With that in mind, this was a severe crash. Brown was driving a Suzuki Forenza, a vehicle whose production stopped in the US in 2008 when it was renamed the Chevrolet Cruze. Per the IIHS, the car had a poor side impact rating, with a poor structural and safety cage score, poor scores for rear passenger head and neck injury, and only acceptable injury scores for the rear passenger pelvis and leg. To put it bluntly, in a side impact crash with a small SUV-sized vehicle at 31 mph, you’d expect a significant risk of head and neck injury (e.g., a concussion, brain damage, skull fractures, broken necks, etc), terrible levels of vehicular intrusion (as in the vehicle hitting you inside your vehicle), and significant risks of broken legs and pelvises.

The simplest way to describe the potential impacts of such a collision is to state that death or severe, catastrophic injury would be likely. It’s a fortunate surprise that both girls and their mother weren’t killed on the spot.

Which injuries did the girls receive, and which car seats did they use?

The crash occurred. Samantha was on the driver’s side behind her mother. She was on the side of the impact. The ProPublica article doesn’t mention her injuries in any detail, but a GoFundMe notes she suffered a broken pelvis. Jillian suffered neck and spinal injuries and eventual paralysis from the neck down. Both girls were in car seats–booster seats by all appearances, because we know Jillian was in one and as the older sister, Samantha would not have been in an earlier stage seat (i.e., a harnessed seat). Jillian weighed 37 pounds. Samantha would have weighed more. No article I’ve found mentions which specific car seat she sat in. We can assume it was a booster, but only her parents know which one.

What do best practices suggest would have been best placements for these girls?

There’s all kind of press about how Evenflo was in the wrong for allowing kids to be boostered from 30 pounds onward instead of from 40 pounds. However, I don’t think that was the core issue here. Jillian weighed 37 pounds; she was much closer to 40 than she was to 30. I don’t think the 3 extra pounds had anything to do with the unfortunate issues she suffered. The argument put forth online is that, had the parents known that 40 pounds was a safer minimum for boostering than 30, they’d have placed her in a harnessed seat. Perhaps. However, at the same time, parents are already highly fond of ignoring safety recommendations, and the majority of states allow children to be boostered from the time they turn 4 or 5 already, regardless of weight. In all probability, Jillian’s parents would have boostered her whether the seat had said 40 pounds or 30. But let’s take a look at best practices. What would the Swedes do?

The truth is that best practices are rather straightforward here. The Swedes are fine with boostering from as young as 5. That said, they’re fine with doing so because kids are expected to sit properly in such seats and are taught to do so. I have no idea how Jillian was sitting in her booster seat at the time of the crash, but it’s a given that if a child isn’t sitting appropriately in a booster seat, she’s not going to be as safe as she would have been in a forward-facing harnessed seat, which essentially forces her to sit properly due to the harness. For all we know, she might have had the shoulder belt around her neck or behind her arm. Or not. We just don’t know. But we do know that she’d have been in in a booster seat in Sweden.

Does this mean she’d have suffered the same injuries there? Possibly. Probably not. For one thing, the intersection that led to the collision may not have existed in Sweden, or at the very least, may have had much lower speeds and speed cameras present, reducing the odds of the collision occurring to begin with. Additionally, it’s likely that the vehicle her parents drove would have had more safety features like a better side impact score and perhaps side airbags, given Swedes’ greater propensity to adopt safety-minded technology than Americans and American manufacturers in general.

What if she’d been rear-facing? Would that even have been possible?

On an entirely different note, as a 5-year old who weighed 37 pounds, Jillian could still easily have been rear-facing, whether in Sweden (where 55 pound rear-facing seats are available), or in the United States, where seats like the Clek Fllo, Clek Foonf, and Diono Rainier –all 50-pound rear-facing seats existed back in 2016, and would have allowed her to have rear-faced then and continued to rear-face for several more months, if not years, given her weight.

Would rear-facing have offered her more protection? Yes, by virtue of the fact that she’d have been pushed into her seat rather than out of it due to the forward motion of the collision (despite being a side impact, the vehicle was still traveling forward, which is why Jillian was found slumped forward after the crash). Additionally, she’d have received all the benefits of being in a harnessed seat. This would have been the absolute best seating configuration for her.

We can’t judge the effectiveness of a car seat from a crash test video

As tempting as it is to watch a video of a dummy being flung in one direction and use it as evidence of the effectiveness or lack thereof of a car seat design, we just can’t do so in a reality-based world–even if we’re physicians and members of the AAP. That’s not how crash tests work. That’s not how the NHTSA, NTF, IIHS, NCAP, or any other reputable organization tests vehicles. The dummies aren’t simply used as visual props; they’re filled with sensors which are read to determine the actual forces an individual of a certain size (weight and height and proportions) may have faced in a similar position under similar forces in a similar crash. It doesn’t move the discussion forward to quote individuals (even physicians) stating breathlessly that they would or would not have their children in particular seats based on their viewings of videos. With all due respect, you can’t tell a 300 HIC-15 head trauma from 3000 HIC-15 trauma by watching a dummy’s head snap back and forth. One leads to brain damage. The other does not. You tell them apart by sensors.

Despite our best efforts, tragedies can and do still occur when children are in cars

I’m the last person to defend corporations; my history on this site shows that I take the sides of individuals and not companies or institutions, because all too often, institutions in profit-based countries put people last, and we all suffer because of it. But underneath it all, I advocate for best practices, regardless of where they come from.

Had Samantha–who had also been boostered–suffered Jillian’s injuries while Jillian had suffered hers in exchange, her parents would not be blaming Evenflo, despite the fact that both children would have been–again–in nearly the same crash conditions. Had Jillian passed away and not been confined to a lifetime of paralysis, again, Evenflo would not have been on trial here, and the situation would have been viewed as what it was–a severe, tragic collision. Bringing a suit against Evenflo may help pay for Jillian’s considerable medical costs (especially since we refuse to adopt a single payer healthcare system that would make such costs bearable for families), but it doesn’t accurately reflect the circumstances of her injuries.

The only car seat configuration I’m sure would have offered significantly greater protection, given what we know, was rear-facing. But I can’t blame parents for not rear-facing a 5-year old. And I can’t blame Evenflo for an internal decapitation involving a boostered 5-year old. She either wasn’t mature enough to use the seat or she was. If she weren’t, she wouldn’t have sat properly. If she were, the fact that she weighed 37 pounds was irrelevant; a 5-year old can legally sit in a booster and can safely do so, as evidenced by its being the standard age in Sweden. Blaming Evenflo for this tragedy is a bad call.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.

 

US vs Swedish Car Safety: How Many Children Die from Crashes Each Year?

A child born in the US will have a greater risk of road trauma than one born in Sweden. But by how much, and why?

When it comes to the all-important business of keeping children alive, the United States has much to learn. While we’re far ahead of the poor countries on the globe (for a variety of reasons, including the sad fact that manufacturers readily make lower-grade cars to sell overseas due to weaker regulations protecting their populations), we’re actually rather behind nations that exist on a level playing field–fellow rich countries like Sweden, Norway, and the United Kingdom, among many others.

We’ve compared the rates of child deaths in Norway to the United States in the past and seen how we’ve come up short in comparison. Today we’re going to make the same comparison with the latest data available between Sweden, another fellow rich country from which most of my research on best practices in car seat safety is based, and the United States. To put it bluntly, we lose far more children (a disproportionately greater amount) to road trauma each year in the United States than Swedes do in Sweden. And as is almost always the case in road fatalities, these deaths are almost always preventable.

How many children die in road traffic crashes each year in Sweden?

Per the NTF, 5 children died due to road traffic in Sweden in 2018. Four of them were pedestrians while one was a vehicle passenger. Between 2016 and 2018, on average, there were 4 deaths of children under 13 each year.

How many children die from road trauma in the United States each year?

Per the IIHS, who pulls numbers from the Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) of the US Department of Transportation, there were 880 deaths of children younger than 18 in 2018, with 639 (73%) occurring with passenger vehicle occupants, 157 (18%) with pedestrians, and 26 (3%) with bicycling children.

How do Swedish and US child crash deaths compare proportionally?

We know there were 880 child car crash deaths in the US in 2018 and 5 in Sweden in the same year. The US number is much higher, but how much higher is it? After all, there are more children in the US than there are in Sweden since the US population is larger than that of Sweden.

This is where proportions come in. For simplicity’s sake, we won’t compare the number of children in Sweden to the number in the US, but will compare populations and presume there are proportionally similar percentages of children in both countries. This is actually a rather accurate assumption, as the Swedish government notes the average Swedish woman has 1.75 children, while the World Bank notes that the fertility rate in Sweden in 2016 was 1.85 births per woman, which was nearly identical to the US’ rate at 1.8.

With that assumption out of the way, the population in Sweden in 2018 was approximately 10.12 million, while that of the United States was 327.2 million. In other words, the US population was 32.33x larger, or there were 32.33 Americans for each Swede. Let’s assume then, that there were roughly 33.33 American children for each Swedish child. The death toll in the US at 880 was 176x that of Sweden’s at 5. In other words, 176 American children died due to car crashes for each Swedish child who passed away.

The proportions are not even. It was much safer to be a child in Sweden in terms of odds of surviving a country full of cars than it was to be a child in the United States. Specifically, despite the fact that there were 32 times as many children in the US as there were in Sweden, the number of children killed was not 32 times higher, as one would have expected had the proportions held. Rather, the death toll was 176 times higher.

We’ve seen this before when comparing adult death rates between the US and Norway, Sweden, and the UK, or child death rates between the US and Norway.

What would the death tolls look like if the US were like Sweden, or if Sweden were like the US?

If the US had the same safety record as Sweden, we’d have lost 32.33 * 5, or roughly 162 children to car crashes in 2018. Instead, we lost 880, or roughly 5.44 children for each Swedish child lost after controlling for population differences.

That’s a huge difference.

To see it the other way, if Sweden had our safety record, they would have lost 5 * 5.44, or roughly 27 children to car crashes in 2018. Instead, they lost 5.

Make no mistake; we’d still have lost more than a hundred children to car crashes even if we’d had as much of a safety-minded culture as that in Sweden. But the difference would have been completely explained by our much greater population. This is not the case here. As things are, if Sweden magically grew to the point where it had a population of 300+ million individuals, they’d still only have lost 1/5th to 1/6th as many children to crashes as we did. They’re doing something (several things) differently there.

Running the numbers this way gives us a different way of understanding what a difference exists between child safety in the United States vs that in Sweden. Due to a variety of reasons, things are different there. It’s safer. But why?

Why are road conditions so much safer for Swedish children than for American ones?

Some of these reasons include the fact that children in Sweden rear-face much longer than ours do (it’s recommended to do so until 4-5 there) and booster much longer than those here (the recommendation is until 10-12) .

However, there are also a variety of differences in driver behavior (e.g., a much more demanding driver’s education program, much as the one in Norway, the fact that drivers use snow tires religiously in the winter and drive with headlights all day long, and alcohol limits are much more stringent there than here) and road infrastructure (there are far more traffic cameras and far more attention to creating divided highways and reducing opportunities for high speed crashes), the road environment there is a far less dangerous and far more cohesive one than ours. This is the case despite the fact that Swedes face much more difficult weather-related driving conditions than we do.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.

 

Why you Never Let Your Children Cross the Street to Board a School Bus

School buses are safe. Making your child cross a street to catch one is not.

If you’re like most parents, your children go to the public schools. There are other valid options, including homeschooling and private schooling, but today’s article is for how the majority of children are educated in the United States (and in most countries beyond these borders). Furthermore, many to most kids around the US who attend public schools do so through the school bus. I’m a fan of school buses. Statistically, they are by far the safest way to transport children to school (yes, safer than driving them yourself, walking them, having them walk themselves, or having them ride themselves).

Are school buses perfect? Not by a long shot

That said, there are a number of unresolved issues in school bus safety in the United States. One is the lack of seat belts, which we’ll discuss another day. Another is the propensity of children to be run over by the buses themselves, which we also won’t discuss today. A third involves children’s tendencies to be hit by other vehicles when the buses themselves are stopped. This is today’s topic, and as with the second issue, it most commonly involves the bus route, or the bus stop.

The majority of kids who are casualties in situations involving school buses are casualties outside the buses, not inside them. Sometimes they’re killed or injured by the buses due to standing or crossing in front of the buses when the buses are ready to take off. But a great many times, they’re hurt because the bus routes that serve their neighborhoods result in a need to cross traffic to reach the bus stop itself, which is where the bus is located.

Bus stops that require children to cross streets are death traps

This is dangerous. At times, this is deadly. This is why I taught you how to force your school district to change such policies immediately by raising the spectre of legal liability. And unfortunately, the case of Xzavier Ingle, Mason Ingle, Alivia Stahl, and Maverik Lowe shows just what can happen when school districts are allowed to get away with such awful bus stops.

How did these children die at the hands of Alyssa Shepherd?

On October 30th, 2018, 24-year old Alyssa Shepherd drove her husband, Neil, to work at approximately 7 AM in Rochester, Indiana. She had her younger brother and two children in her current-generation Toyota Tacoma with her, and was apparently en route to her mother’s house to drop off her brother. Per her testimony, it was “pitch black” outside. She approached a set of flashing lights in the distance on Indiana 25 and was, per her attorney, confused about what she saw, but apparently continued heading toward it at 45 mph. What she was actually approaching was an extended stop sign from a school bus waiting to pick up Xzavier, Mason, Alivia, and Maverik. They lived in a mobile home complex and were required to cross the highway to get to the bus waiting on the other side of the street. It appears Shepherd was westbound while the bus was parked on the south side of the street facing east. The children needed to cross the street southbound to reach the bus. It was a two-lane highway. Shepherd did not stop. She did not appear to slow down whatsoever. There were witnesses, including the bus driver, who reportedly honked his horn in vain to alert her. She hit all four children. One flew 30 feet in the air (Lowe, who survived with critical injuries, including fractures in his ribs, patella, arms, wrist, and legs, in addition to slipped spinal disks close to his neck). The other three children were killed.

The driver was not the only one at fault; the decision to place the stop on the opposite side of the street was that of the school district

While the responsibility for directly hitting the children squarely lies with Ms. Shepherd, who was sentenced to 4 years in prison in December 2019, the responsibility for the atrocious placement of the bus stop lies squarely with the school district. It doesn’ t take a psychic to understand it would not have been placed there for a second had the mobile housing complex (i.e., the trailer park) been a subdivision filled with wealthy, powerful parents. That’s not how this country works. The powerful have voices. The powerful have choices. The rest of us are thrown to the wolves (or at least have our children cross high speed traffic to get to safe modes of transportation). The school district moved the stop after the crash, of course. They always do. But wouldn’t it have made sense for the stop to have been placed in the complex to begin with?

Of course. That’s how things are done in rich neighborhoods, and that’s how things are done in countries that place much higher priorities than ours on child safety (as well as the safety of adults navigating the dangers of auto traffic). It wasn’t done here because the school district didn’t want to do the extra work of setting up the bus stop in the complex. Perhaps it would have involved adhering to ever-so-slightly higher construction standards. Perhaps it would have resulted in a need to talk to the complex’s owners. Perhaps it would simply have added two minutes to the bus route due to the bus’ need to enter the complex and reorient itself facing out. I’m guessing this was the core reason, and the fact that the population served there was not a powerful one was the underlying justification–whether at a conscious or subconscious level–for placing the stop on the other side of a 55-mph trafficked road.

It sounds insane, doesn’t it?

This is why we advocate for changes

This is why this site exists. Because it’s far better to have better policies put into place when children are living, rather than after they’re dead. But when you live in a country, a state, or a city or town that doesn’t prioritize the lives of people over non-people things (such as profits or property or auto traffic), the next best thing to do is to educate yourself. It’s how you defend yourself in today’s society. And if you’re ever asked to put your children in harm’s way for the convenience of your school district, you write that letter, and you read it loud and clear to the school board or district. They might not care about your child, but they’ll certainly care about the legal implications of acknowledging they were warned about risks to life and limb and refused to act in a timely manner.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.

How to Make Your School District Choose a Safer Bus Stop

Not all bus routes are created equal. Here's how to make yours count.
Not all bus routes are created equal. Here’s how to make yours count.

Keeping kids safe around auto traffic isn’t just about car seats–that’s just a part of the equation. The broader picture involves infrastructure, driver choices, and vehicle safety. Choosing a safe car seat and using it correctly falls under driver choices and vehicle safety. But what about when the vehicle is your child’s school bus and the infrastructure involves the bus route and bus stop?

Let’s talk about how to optimize things.

If you’re a parent, grandparent, foster parent, or any kind of caring adult involved in the life of a child, you’ve probably noticed that not all bus stops are created equally. Certain neighborhoods (the wealthy ones) tend to get bus stops far away from traffic, on quiet, practically dead-end roads and cul-de-sacs, on streets so safe you could let your baby crawl about while you went to fetch the paper.

Other neighborhoods? You know the ones. They get the bus stops practically in the middle of the highway. To get to the stop, your kids might need to walk along up to a mile or two of high-speed traffic, most likely without a sidewalk, often without a shoulder, and so on. Or you’ll have the stops that require your kids to cross multiple lanes of traffic with nothing but a hexagon and their prayers to protect them. This, incidentally, was exactly the kind of “stop” that led to the deaths of Xzavier, Mason, and Alivia on October 30th, 2018 in Rochester, Indiana.

The worst part of that story – and of all of these stories – is that the school districts almost always have a very good idea of the risks involved in setting up these awful bus routes and stops. They don’t change them for the same reasons powerful people do bad things everywhere – because they think they can get away with them. And they think so because for the vast portion of recorded and unrecorded history, they’ve been right.

So how do you prevent this as a 21st-century advocate and reader of the Car Crash Detective?

You channel your inner Legally Blonde!

You have the right to a safe school bus route.

There are certain buzz words that strike fear into the hearts of school boards. There are things their lawyers don’t want to hear in a court of law, because if it’s proven they heard them at any point in the past from a parent, the school district will need to start writing 6, 7, or 8 figure checks to parents. These are the words you want in writing. These are the words you want to share with your principal, your school board, your superintendent. These are the words that will bring an end to whichever gauntlet an HR weenie decided your child would run each day simply because you were zoned as a “non-VIP” parent.

Child Endangerment.

Legal Implications.

Willful Negligence.

Criminal Negligence.

Risk of Harm.

Grievous Bodily Injury.

You get the idea. You don’t need a ton of these words. You just need a few of them, and you just need them in writing. If you show up in person with your complaints in addition to your letter (typed), you’ll get an even quicker response. Perhaps as quickly as the day after your complaint. But you do have to use this kind of language, and you do have to make it clear that A.) the school district is putting children at risk of grave injury due to bus stops or bus routes, and B.) you have made the school district aware of your concerns.

This is a powerful process, and not one to be used lightly. But it’s the second quickest way to avoid senseless deaths due to criminally negligent bus stop placements. The first way, of course, is to have children mowed down by oncoming traffic.

If you find my information on best practices in car and car seat safety helpful, you can buy my books here or do your shopping through this Amazon link. Canadians can shop here for Canadian purchases.  It costs nothing extra to do so, but when you shop through my links, a small portion of your purchase, regardless of what you buy, will go toward the maintenance of The Car Crash Detective.