Keeping Children Safe in Driveways
Some of the steps we take to ensure that our children are safe included:
1. Ensuring another adult was knowingly supervising the children.
2. Putting the children in the car with us.
3. Locking them in the house (after explaining what you were doing and that you would only be a sec)
Option one and two are not always feasible – there is not always an adult around and quite frankly it is a real pain to have to put the children into the car with you, just to move it in or out of the driveway, so option three was always my preferred option. Recently however my daughter (3.5yrs) has learnt how to unlock the door. This now provokes a new fear that although she is generally very good and I have taught her the risks with cars, you just never know with children. This made me look at the facts about driveway incidents and what I could do to avoid it.
What I discovered is that you can buy Reversing Camera’s that are inexpensive and that can be easily installed into your existing car! They even have different types of screens and camera’s for different applications. I am quite excited by this option as although we will still take the correct precautions to ensure that the children are unlikely to be in the driveway in harm’s way, it means that when I reverse I can see behind the car decreasing the chance of having a horrible accident.
On a lighter note, I like this idea as it also means that when I am reverse parking I am less likely to hit anything. Thank you – reverse camera! Once I get the camera installed and tried, I will let you know how it works in our product review.
If you are looking at purchasing a car, The NRMA Insurance website has a Reversing Visibility Index which gives a rating for cars with the most effective rear visibility.
Our Article Driveway Safety provides a range of factual information on the number of Driveway Incidents and the expert’s recommended safety tips.
