Getting to know about German Child Car Seat Laws

In 2005, Yashendu did not remain the only one of my siblings to travel to Germany. Purnendu also came to visit. It was his first trip abroad, too, and of course he was also happy and excited about his journey.

When he was going to arrive in Frankfurt, I was in Denmark for program and so I had asked a friend from Mainz to pick him up. He did and Purnendu stayed there for a day. He did not have much time to see Germany before he got into a plane to go to Greece where I finally met him. We had some days of program there, stayed with a nice friend and then came back to Germany together. After some more days in Germany, it was time for Purnendu to fly back to India.

A friend was going to drop him off at the airport. She had a baby girl of a bit more than half a year and so it was our friend on the driver’s seat, me sitting next to her and Purnendu on the backseat next to the baby who was safely buckled up in her car seat. A car seat, something that was completely new to Purnendu. I had already seen car seats for children with several friends across the world but in India we did not have any such thing.

We were talking on the drive and Purnendu was playing a little bit with the baby. When we were halfway to the airport, the little girl got bored or annoyed or wanted to have her mother and started crying. Purnendu tried to distract her and get her to stop but it didn’t work. Finally, when she was screaming, he started unbuckling her with the intention of taking her out and comforting her.

Our friend saw what Purnendu was doing and immediately exclaimed ‘No, don’t open the belt! You cannot take her out while driving!’ She was getting very excited and Purnendu and I, surprised, looked at her. ‘But she is crying’ he explained. ‘It is okay, let her cry but we are not allowed to take her out while driving, it is not safe! She will have to learn this!’ Obviously, Purnendu stopped his efforts to open the belt and just tried to calm the baby down. Luckily, we were soon there, could stop the car and then finally get the baby out of its seat.

This was the day when Purnendu and I learned about the German law that children have to sit buckled up in the car seat as long as the car is rolling. In India people don’t use car seats for children until today and we went up to Delhi to buy Apra’s car seat. It is the only one wide and far and it will definitely still take a long time until such a law reaches India.