Yep, it’s crazy to me that pretending you are ignorant of everything that affects your job is their best defense.

OMG I was born in 1960 and you described EXACTLY what we did back then.  No set belts, no car seats, and if I was lucky, my dad would let me ride on his lap pretending to steer.  How am I even alive?

It is absolutely amazing to me how long that “mom move”, which is what we called it, has lasted in muscle memory.   Seatbelts, car seats and airbags be damned!

right - my sisters and I rolled around in the backseat like a bunch of bowling balls. We deliberately tried to crush each other against the door when the car would go around a corner. Hard to believe we survived. 

.... especially if it’s a bag of groceries...

Science!

Waiting in the car was the norm for us. Three boys here, so my parents were of the opinion that if we waited in teh car, we wouldn’t breaak anything in the store.

We had a VW Bug, a 1967. I was 9 when we bought it. Parents went in the front seat, my middle brother next to me in the back seat and my youngest brother, then 2, went in the parcel bucket behind the back seat.

Oh my, it’s like you were in our car! My mother’s Buick had a fold down arm rest that my baby sister sat on so that she could fly out the window more easily see better. I slept on the back seat floor on longer trips and yes, my brother did puke in my hair.

Some of my earliest memories are of riding in my Dad’s lap while he was driving. I thought it was so cool to put my hands on the steering wheel like I was doing something.

I am 40 years old and my mom will still reflexively slam an arm across me if she stops short while driving and I’m in the front seat. This is why I almost never let her drive when we’re together, that shit hurts!

On long road trips, my brother and I would simply lay down. We took turns to see who got the bench and who had to bend their knees over the transmission tunnel laying on the floorboards.

I do it to my daughter all the time (sometimes I brake a little hard...and drive a little fast...). The first time I did it to her she gave me the most confused look ever. Now she just kind of expects it. I’m probably raising the next generation of arm-belt.

I’ve developed a variation of this reflex from driving my Falcon, which is to reach out and push the passenger back up to keep them from falling over on me in hard right-hand turns.

Funny. I was born in the mid 70’s and recently caught myself flinging my arm out during a sudden stop with nobody else in the car.   I did some soul searching about just how deep that move is imprinted into my brain. 

My Dad had a Cargo van that was the family hauler. Sometimes they just set the playpen up in the back of the van and Id ride around in that (according to legend)

Next time put the vodka in a car seat, you barbarian!

Oh god, that’s really awful! I’m glad that’s “all” that happened, as bad as it was (and you know, NOT something that resulted in a head or spinal cord injury, or death). Those slow motion I can’t do anything to stop this moments tend to haunt us, especially as parents or those entrusted to care for children. My kid man…

I used to shift gears for my Mom from an early age. She was usually juggling coffee and cigarettes in those days, so I was like having a little automatic.