I have been thinking of writing this for a while, and the fact that it has been raining made me decide to expedite the process. I know that all of my expat readers have seen one of these before, but I wanted to draw them to the attention of local drivers.
This is a child's car seat. It is not a toy. It is a safety device, that is designed to prevent your kid from becoming a flying death machine when you or someone else, does one of your usual and utterly astonishing road maneuvers.
Now, I know that cultural awareness and tolerance is spoken about widely in the papers and on a lot of the blogs here - and while I fully respect the religious beliefs of my hosts, there has to come a time when you need to be practical.
Picture the scene. This morning - coming out of Seeb and onto the highway, I am driving behind a late model Mercedes, and in the back, I see the beautiful smiling faces of three local children. Two girls and one boy - all between three and five years old.
Dad hits the brakes as another muppet slices across two lanes of traffic, and the kids disappear, only to resurface again albeit in a different order - grinning and waving.
I just don't know how parents can allow this situation to occur.
Time for a crash course in Physics:
The force of gravity upon you means that right now, you are experiencing what we call 1G - or one times the force of gravity.
When you accelerate or decelerate, you experience different levels of G.
For example, when I make a tight turn at work at high speed, I can experience about 6G sometimes more.
As well as being uncomfortable, it also has an effect on my body's perceived mass.
If my head weighs 10kg - this means that in a 6G turn, it now feels like it weighs 60kg.
During a rapid deceleration, I can experience "negative G' which will try to pull me out of the seat.
If I wasn't very securely strapped in, I would quite literally be minced after I disappeared through the instrument panel.
The same thing goes for your children.
In a 120 kph crash, the deceleration factor can make the average child without proper restraints, pass through the car interior with the force of an elephant.
And if it happens, there is no prayer in the world that will save them.
A flying child with that much kinetic energy, has several options:
They can, if you are lucky, go through the windscreen, killing only themselves.
Or, if your vehicle gets hit at an angle, the child can bounce around the inside of the cab, killing everyone.
Put three kids in the car - and you triple your chances of instant death for all.
Think that it can't happen to you? Think again.
I get the feeling that it happens here a lot.
What stuns me is that, as far as I know, there is only one retailer that sells these seats in this country - Baby Shop in the Centrepoint chain.
This is absolutely outrageous!
THE USE OF CHILD CAR SEATS SHOULD BE LAW IN OMAN - Take that to the Ministries.
Get it sorted. Now!
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