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Child Car Smoking Ban ?

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mikey4444 | 09:43 Wed 29th Jan 2014 | News
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Labour will today, in the House of Lords, try to start the process to ban smoking in cars with children inside them today ::

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25939908

Seems like a sensible idea to me, although the tobacco lobby predictably don't agree. ( surprise, surprise ! ) Anybody here on AB think that smoking in a car with children is a good thing ?
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Disgusting habit at best, I'm surprised it's necessary. Time and again I've seen parents in the from Gassing there own kids in the back. They invariable have the "child on board" pointless sign, don't harm our kids but we'll just gas them with Cyanide and 500 other toxic chemicals! Lovely. Yes I agree with the ban but I'm sad that it's necessary.
11:00 Wed 29th Jan 2014
How will it be enforced?

If your 14 year old looks 16, you'll be okay.

If your 16 year old looks 14, you'll keep getting stopped.

By the time the Police pull anyone over, the cigarette will have vanished. The smell will be due to the cigarette I had before the children were in the car.

Children can't buy cigarettes or smoke in public until 16, but they can smoke in private at any age. What if the child is smoking? Call the social services?

If you are holding a cigarette so you can light it when you get to your destination, you will get stopped.

Such a law would be virtually impossible to administer, a complete headache for the Police and, frankly, an utterly absurd and ludicrous waste of time.

Typical posturing by the trots.
It's 18 Jayne.
Oh yeah, 18

Which makes it even worse, because 18 is the real grey area where it becomes difficult to tell who is over age, and who is under ... especially through the window of a car.

The Police would have to stop everyone who was smoking, prove that they were smoking, obtain documentary proof of the age of the passengers, etc.

Final score ...

Police Resources 0 - 1 Stupid Laws
Do you not think it would be mainly aimed at cars where the children are in car seats/booster seats?
Disgusting habit at best, I'm surprised it's necessary. Time and again I've seen parents in the from Gassing there own kids in the back. They invariable have the "child on board" pointless sign, don't harm our kids but we'll just gas them with Cyanide and 500 other toxic chemicals! Lovely. Yes I agree with the ban but I'm sad that it's necessary.
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Child on board is not a pointless sign. It's in case of a crash.
No, of course it's not a good thing.

The child will have to walk/run beside the car. This would also prevent child obesity, good all round I think.
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Most of these laws are unpopular but hopefully the next generation along will abide by them, I remember when seat belt wearing became law, everyone moaned but now everyone wears them, speaking on mobiles, I don't usually see youngsters on them whilst driving it's mainly people aged 30 up so hopefully this law will help the babies of the future to not be sitting in an enclosed space full of smoke.
ummmm ... Possibly, although

(1) that would be tempting parents to leave off any highly visible safety restraints on short journeys

(2) you would get an inconsistency of application if some forces allied the law to all minors, some only targeted booster seats, etc

(3) what's the point in making a law that applies to children up to 18 if you don't bother applying it to anyone over, say, 12?

(3) if you get married at 16 or 17, and pass your driving test at 17, would you get stopped if you smoke with your wife in the car? If not ... why not? Selective enforcement of the law is never a good thing.

(4) if you are driving a car at 17, and smoking, would you be stopped because you have got yourself in the car?

What you have to remember is that, once a law is made, thousands of people, including all criminal lawyers, will start looking for flaws, loopholes, inconsistencies with the human rights legislation, etc.

A law like this is a lovely idea ... but it will never work in practice.
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It would be a wonderful thing if this country, in the twenty-first century could produce a nation of people who would say,"yes, in this enlightened country it is my right to smoke where I want but I'm intelligent and tolerant enough to know I can't", without the need of unenforceable laws. Again I & T comes into it where the "child on board" sign is used. Once it's in the car it stays there irrespective of whether the child is there or not.It becomes a time wasting dangerous sign if there is an accident and the child is not on board.The rescue crews search needlessly.
Great point, Vulcan.

Perhaps it should be an offence to display a "child on board" sign if there's no child in the car.

After all, you wouldn't display a "compressed gas" or a "flammable materials" sign, and the presence or otherwise of a child is much more important.

If a car is on fire, or in a dangerous situation after an accident, and the unconscious driver has been pulled out, but ...

There's a "child on board" sign.

Do the rescue services ...

... ignore the sign? (so why have it at all?)

... go back to search the car (putting their own lives at risk)

Who knows? And all because the driver was too selfish and lazy to remove the "child on board" sign when their child was not in the car.
dylanfanatic,
Are you real?
What you do in your own vehicle is not entirely your own business, especially if it constitutes child abuse (which smoking in a car with young children basically is). You wouldn't force alcohol down a child's throat, why do it with cigarette smoke?
The legal age for a child to drink alcohol is 5 yrs
Moot point JJ. After all, you wouldn't encourage it unless you were seriously deranged, would you?
Well, you could say moot point ... or you could say "that's the law"

:0)

I was just saying.
I am all for personal freedom, but it's important to pick your battle grounds.

In this instance, the notion of wilfully inflicting poisonous smoke on a child in a confined space, in order to exercise your personal freedom as an adult seems rather misplaced.

If we were to start from the fact that cigarettes are the only product legally availble that, if used for their intended purpose, stand a good chance of harming, andpotentially killing the user, then the notion of smoking at all comes under the spotlight.

It is a ludicrous habbit - you only have to look at people doing it - do they know how foolish they look?

The shame of looking like a moron would put me off smoking - personal freedom would not enter into it!

Not a good thing, that's for sure, let's hope they ban it.

Also Drivers should be banned fro smoking at all, imo, you can't be in proper control of a vehicle with a fag in your hand!

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