The city traffic actually sees more braking and acceleration in a car than highways. Its when the car accelerates or decelerates, the G- Forces put pressure on the infants neck which is vulnerable under the age of 1 year. A rear facing child seat helps negating any effects of sudden braking on the child’s neck.

A rear facing child seat fitted on a car seat adapter.

If the child were to face front and sit, while braking, the child’s head will be thrown forward putting enormous pressure on their neck and can injure them fatally. In a rear facing seat, every time the car stops, the child is pressed against the seat instead of going forward, this way the chances of injuring their neck is minimized.

Note: A child’s head weighs a lot more in comparison to their body than an adult’s head.

Choosing a child seat for your car.

Some manufacturers sell their own brand of car seats to fit into their vehicle. There are other third party manufacturers that specialize in manufacturing of these seats and often supply to car companies as well.

The seat you choose should have the following.

1. It should be rear facing for any child below the age of 18 months.
2. The seat should be adaptable to multiple cars, get one with a car seat adapter, this way either the adapter or the seat itself will fit in your car.
3. The seat should have at least 3 point seat belts. Babies are ingenious and observant, they can get out of almost any tied up situation.
4. Get side restraints to stop the head from moving side to side when the baby is sleeping and the car is turning.
5. Un-buckling the child from the seat should not take more than a few seconds. Imagine yourself in emergencies, where every second may count.
6. Get a seat that is washable in a washing machine, these tend to get very very dirty. The child will throw up, defecate, eat, drink, spill, do everything in this seat.
7. Get danglers to hang from the seat, this keeps the child’s attention focused away from the seat belts.
8. In warmer climate, a towel or cloth is needed over the seat to minimize sweating.

Where you can buy these? In Bangalore?

If you want to buy one off-the-shelf in Bangalore, you can head to Shopper Stop on Banerghata Road, or Lifestyle in Oasis, Inner Ring Road, Koramangala. You can also get them at Mothercare, 12th Main, Indiranagar.

If you are ok with buying them online, then there are more options available.

How long a child can sit in a child seat?

A child can travel sitting in a child seat at a stretch for 3 hours. It is always better to give them breaks every 100 km or so. The seats can get very binding and hot for a moving child.

A front and rear facing child seat which can be used even after 18 months.

Booster Seats

When the child is above the age of 18 months, he or she can then use a booster seat to sit on. By this age, the kid’s neck is strong enough and can tolerate more forces on them. A booster seat faces the right direction and lets the kid watch out of window while traveling. The main purpose of the booster seat is to assure that the kid is snugly held by the seat belts. Using a booster seat to just increase the kid’s ride height is not a good idea.

Booster seats are available in many form and sizes and can be used by a kid for the next 4 years.

A booster seat for older children.

Do not place a child of under 18 months on a booster seat unless directed so by it’s user manual. Most children under the age of 18 months should be placed in rear facing child seats.

Child seats and airbags

Most modern cars have airbags for both the front seats. Child seats are to placed only on rear seats unless the child needs attention or the parent is traveling alone. In such cases, switch off the passenger side airbags for the safety of the child. In a rear facing seat, an airbag will do more harm than good in the the event of an accident.

If your car does not have a airbag override control, place the child seat only on the rear seats.

Addresses in Bangalore

Shoppers Stop

Commerce@Mantri, N.S.Palya, Bannerghatta Road, Bangalore, KA. 560076. Phone:080 – 5121 5681-4. Store timings:Weekdays: 11:00 – 8:30 Weekends: 11:00 – 9:00

Lifestyle

Adarsh Opus, W – 76,  Door No. 1, Campbell Road, Austin Town, Bangalore – 560 047. Tel: 080 – 2556 4555

Lifestyle Koramangala

Oasis Centre. #30, Salarpuria Tech Point, Inner Ring Road, Koramangala. Bangalore – 560 095. Tel: 080 – 4027 6400

Mother Care

Icon-Mall, 12th Main, 5th Cross, Indira Nagar, Bangalore. Tel: 080 - 25213009

Some illustrations that may help you decide on a car seat.

Source - http://stokes.chop.edu/programs/injury/

Source - http://stokes.chop.edu/programs/injury/

Source - http://stokes.chop.edu/programs/injury/

Visit here for more information and detail.

On any given day in Bangalore, or for that matter, any city, you will see a lot of drivers using their high beams to drive in traffic. Legally, this is not allowed by traffic regulations. But if one sees closely, many use it more out of compulsion or need rather than intension.

A factory fitted High Beam Throw

Using High Beams to avoid eminent danger

Here’s a list of situations where it is legal to use the high beams or brights.

1. When there is little or no illumination on the road. Like an empty stretch of highway with no illumination and higher speed limits. Use of High Beams are necessary here to ensure safe driving. Lower your beams to let oncoming traffic pass without blinding them.
2. To alert oncoming traffic to lower their beams, only once or twice. This is a nuisance that we face almost on a regular basis. Most under maintained vehicles like Cabs, Buses have inadequate Low Beams compelling their driver to use the High Beams to view the road ahead. You can blink at them with your high beams to ask them to lower theirs.
3. Signaling a slow moving vehicle in front of you to give you way so that you can overtake. This can be done only once or twice and not repeatedly. If the vehicle still does not move, you can conclude that the driver of the vehicle is not alert and can use the Horn to alert them. Large and heavy vehicles, with well sealed cabins can only be alerted by the use of high beams to blink once or twice.
4. When traveling on a high speed limit highway with clearly divided lanes for oncoming traffic. Higher speeds translates to crossing longer distances in lesser time. You need longer reaching lamps to see the road ahead and ensure safety.

Newer technology has brighter lamps that does not blind the oncoming traffic.

Many modern cars are fitted with HID (High Intensity Discharge) lamps and lenses to ensure that the driver gets to see the road without blinding the oncoming traffic. However, use of HID lamps without lenses results in lesser illumination than their Halogen counterparts and just provides white light with very bad throw. Car headlamps are designed to be used with a specific type of bulb, and changing that to a higher wattage, brighter bulb does not always result in better illumination. Such modifications should be avoided or carried out under expert supervision.

A set of projector headlamps

HID high + lo beam in action

In India, the wattage allowed for headlamps are a standard 55 W (known as a 55/60 in open market).

Anything higher that this is subject to scrutiny by traffic police. Though many people upgrade their headlamps to 90/100 or 130/100, these are not legal to be used on paved roads. These lamps are specifically created for extreme condition use only, like forests, muddy terrains, etc. (although many of our Highways qualify in these categories). Use of higher wattage lamps blind the oncoming traffic, and increases chances of traffic accidents.

More details are here if one is interested.

So.. here we are following a white corolla on the Airport Road and nearing Manipal Hospital Junction. Now, we all know that it’s a notorious place even with the Airport now shifted out, and in those days.. it was pure chaos. One would actually calculate the approximate time and add 20 minutes for the junction while heading to the airport.

Banerughatta Road, on a rainy night.

So.. where were we.. ah yes, following the white corolla, in the center lane and more towards the left. There are 2 rows of vehicle on our right waiting for.. well to turn right or to take a U-Turn, or whatever. The left side traffic is free to go straight or turn left.  Here’s when this corolla chap does the unthinkable, he spots a gap between two cars on the right and tries to get in.

The corolla being huge, heavy and largely un-maneuverable stops with its bum sticking out. This effectively blocks the 3rd lane with vehicles piling up behind us by the second. I wait, the patient me thinks that the corolla has other plans, probably he will reverse a little and give it another try as I can see that it’s possible for him to move out by at least 2 more feet. He does not.

I honk.

People behind us Honk. And the whole line of vehicles honk.

The corolla meanwhile has all it’s windows up. Has the stereo on loud so that we are largely benefitted from it. And the driver is oblivious to the whole Tamasha he has created behind him. We go for the next option, lets get out and ask him to move. But the vehicles are so close together it’s not possible to open the doors. We roll down the windows and scream, no use.

With about 10 minutes left for boarding to start, I do the only thing left to do. I move our car and ever so slowly bump the toyota.

“Dhunk”

This gets his attention, he rolls his window and stereo down to give us an earful. The moment his head came out, an onslaught of abuses were hurled towards him from almost 15 cars behind him. It was needed, suddenly the abuses made the toyota much lighter, more maneuverable and he neatly tucked himself into the center lane. We passed giving him the stares, in my ORVM I could see that others were not so polite, they spoke a lot with their hands outside the window.

We reached the airport with about a minute to spare.

Just another day in the traffic. And kindly maintain lane discipline, it makes life a lot easier.

A fender bender

Road incidents result in the deaths of an estimated 1.2 million people worldwide each year, and injure about forty times this number

A 1985 study by K. Rumar, using British and American crash reports as data, found that 57% of crashes were due solely to driver factors, 27% to combined roadway and driver factors, 6% to combined vehicle and driver factors, 3% solely to roadway factors, 3% to combined roadway, driver, and vehicle factors, 2% solely to vehicle factors and 1% to combined roadway and vehicle factors.

Drive safe.

I am parked next to a busy road.

There is an absolutely walkable patch after the road ends. Which can be called a footpath. Although, years of ‘no one walking’ has left some overgrown shrubs and bushes on it.

And then there is this long row of cars parked right next to the footpath.

After that is a 3 lane wide road (thats minus the parking) where vehicles normally cruise at break-neck speeds as thats one of the few breathers you get on this road to overtake the slow-going tractors, autos etc.

Bangalore Traffic.. much like this actually

We are again deviating, sorry for that.. the Note is about the people who walk this side of the road. It has been my observation (I have been observing for past 7 months) that most people prefer to walk between the parked vehicles and right into the traffic.

The logic is unknown. Is the safety of a perfectly safe footpath undesirable? (which is shielded from the traffic by the parked cars). Or is it more like “Need that Buzz” and prove a point by walking right into an oncoming 3 ton truck at 60 Kmph.

On further observation one may note that the educated (so called) lot prefer the traffic side while the under educated prefer the footpath. Groups of laborers walking actually take the footpath while the IT crowd masquerading with their Collar IDs like the close brush with death.

I have pointed to a few fellows of the alternative available. Was not really taken that well.

Bottomline, I guess if you desire to be a roadkill, no amount of good sense can prevent that.

PS. The IT crowd part is just an observation, I am not necessarily generalizing on a whole bunch of IT people here. Not to mention, I do fall in a similar category.