I’m pretty sure this is going to be a contentious Autopian Asks, but I think it’s still an interesting question. We, as automotive enthusiasts, love whatever specific kinds of cars the Car God has decided to afflict upon us, and those cars aren’t always the safest cars. Whether it be by age or design traits or build quality or whatever, we often find ourselves hopelessly smitten by vehicles that we’d really, really prefer not to be in a wreck in. And many of us have kids, kids we wish to take places and share the joy of our car obsessions with. When the cars we have and love aren’t really all that safe, how do we reconcile that? Or do we?
Let’s be honest here, when it comes to safety, most of the really interesting and collectible cars are, by modern standards, unsafe. Hell, pretty much anything from before the 1990s is an absolute deathtrap by modern standards. But that wasn’t that big a deal, since parents didn’t start to actually love their kids until, what, the late 1980s or so?
Ubiquitous airbags and anti-lock brakes and lane departure warnings and advanced crumple zones and all of that sort of thing are all relatively new. Would you take your kid in a car that lacked such features?
I would. I mean, I did. And, still do. I’m not saying this is a decision anyone should emulate (and I recognize economic factors that might make this less of a choice and more of a necessity), but that’s just what I seem to have done. Before my son Otto was born, my cars were a 1973 Reliant Scimitar GTE, a 1973 Volkswagen Beetle, and our “modern” car, a 1982 VW Rabbit Convertible. When we knew Otto was coming in 2010, we decided to sell the Rabbit and get a “modern” car, a 2000 VW Passat Wagon, the V6 AWD one.
That car had airbags and was decades newer than anything we had; it seemed a relatively responsible thing for a new parent to do. And then, the same week when the boy came into the world, the fuel pump failed.
So, Otto’s first automotive trips were strapped into a safe, approved child seat belted into an unsafe, unapproved little archaic car with a design that was basically from 1938: my Beetle.
We eventually got the Passat fixed and used that as well, but I also frequently drove Otto around in the Beetle, and he loved it.
It was noisy and bouncy and looked like a giant toy, all pluses when you’re a toddler. We drove all over in that Beetle, though I would avoid taking him on long highway trips in it, for whatever that was worth.
Other parents would give me the stench-eye sometimes when they saw me pulling him out of that little yellow car, as they unloaded their children from Audi and Volvo SUVs. More than once in the pre-school pickup line I got some condescendingly “concerned” questions, and at least once got a very self-righteous lecture that suggested that maybe I was unqualified to have children at all.
Then again, plenty of other fellow parents were delighted to see a bright yellow old Beetle around, and the kids all loved it. I’d let them climb in and on it, honk the horn and enjoy that funny, distinctive Beetle smell. I feel like I got more positive responses than negative, though I’m sure things would be very different if, heaven and hell forbid, I actually was in a serious crash with him in the car.
Even though I drove my kid in an objectively unsafe car for years, and still do, I’m conflicted: Am I being a terrible parent? Am I being selfish? Is the fun we have together in the car and the way the car brought us together, and gave my son an appreciation for cars, is that worth the danger I was putting him in, potentially?
I don’t know. I know what the technical “correct” answer is – keep your kid as safe as possible, however possible – but if that’s your only rule in life, you and your kid will miss out on a lot, and you’d probably never let your kid walk on a sidewalk or ride a bike on a public street or climb trees or eat candy or pills they find on the street, and who wants that?
I’m kidding about the found candy or pills. Those are for adults.
I’m really curious to hear all of your opinions, by the way – do you take your kids in your beloved, unsafe cars? With restrictions, and, if so, what are they? Am I actually a terrible parent, or just a partially terrible parent? There’s a lot to discuss here.
I recognize the dilemma, in the end I do the same as you. I installed 3-point seatbelts in the back of the DS and my kids sat in it from age 0 till today. We used the DS to go on holiday 1000 km’s away, with speeds up to 120 km/u. The only thing that is a little bit comforting for us is that I participated in a course to learn how to prevent slipping in bad weather. Surprisingly my 1969 DS did much better than the then new VW Golfs equiped with ABS etcetera. But that only helps to prevent an accident. Once you have an accident a DS is like lego, it loses all its bodyparts immediately.
Don’t have any kids, but my father would drive us around in a Ford Model A. Drum brakes that you had to plan ahead using ( you hope it stops in time), the dashboard was the gas tank. No seat belts, and the steering column was a solid pipe. Telescopic steering columns weren’t invented yet. The emergency brake didn’t work very well. Once we all were in the car with the emergency brake on and the car started moving. We were all able to get out of the car before it rolled down the driveway and knocked the garage off it’s foundation. (We were all young kids at the time)
Daily? Statistically, an accident is not if, but when. It’s not always you, it could be the person texting while their GMC Suburban drifts into your lane. With that in mind, I can’t see driving kids (when we have them) regularly in anything less than a 2010+ vehicle with side curtain airbags and a good safety rating. Daily’ing anything older than that around here doesn’t make much financial sense anyways.
I see the argument that plenty of people survived less-safe vehicles. My grandparents used to strap my mom to the luggage shelf of their Karmen Ghia, and she’s still alive, right? There are two problems with that though:
1. “Things were dangerous yet I survived” is literally the definition of survivorship bias, a logically irrelevant point.
2. Those were the days before half the population commuted to the office in a lifted truck.
I used to commute around urban Toronto in an 80s Volvo, and honestly I felt fine. It’s kinda hard to die when you’re stuck in stop and go traffic on city streets. Torch, your son in the Volkswagen situation probably applies here.
Now we live in a rural area with lots of fast two-lane highways through rock cuts, trees, and lakes. Accidents are rare, but when they do happen, they are typically pretty serious. We make road trips to visit family in the city, and the highways north of Toronto are some of the most reckless driving in the country. We’ll be sticking to modern cars daily from here on out.
That said, a few Sunday drives in classic cars seem within allowable risk tolerances. There are so many risky activities people engage in, (Skiing anyone?) if you can’t stomach a bit of risk, how are you going to enjoy your life?
My wife would love to get a kei truck like a Honda Acty. I don’t think she would mind taking our first grader in it. Then again, she also asked the other day how young a child can be to ride in the sidecar of a motorcycle. LOL
She’s a keeper…
We all survived being shuttled in ‘unsafe’ cars. IMO f the helicopter parents and their holier that thou attitudes.
We also walked to and played in the neighborhood park, walked to school or the local confectionary, went swimming, rode bicycles all by ourselves without the parental bubble wrap.
Sure- We might have survived, but what about the people who didn’t?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
Life is full of risk.
To be fair, not everyone survived
I’m pretty late to this party, but I regularly drive my daughter around in my DF Goblin City frame kit car. Although I don’t consider it unsafe, a lot of people do!
I think driving your kid around in your classic, fun car etc is perfectly fine. Especially when you aren’t on the highway, traveling long distance etc etc. what scared me recently was driving a modern (2020) Toyota Hiace with a flat front cab over van. I’m basically the crumple zone, even though it has air bags, I felt vulnerable. I thought if I crash this thing, that’s it. Our personal cars are basically mobile panic rooms in comparison.
I’m not a hypocrite, I draw the line at exactly the same vehicles I was driven in as a kid.
And I didn’t have booster seats or any of that.
My parents drove me around in the space between the seats and gas tank of an MG TD.
When my son was born in 1991, I was about to drive him and his mother from the upper east side to the upper west side in a 1962 2 door Ford Galaxy with the seats that flop forward in the front and no belts in the back. I got as far as opening the door, and decided to take a cab.
I got a w123 240d and thought that was reasonably safe. Later we had a Volvo 740 turbo wagon. I still think they are reasonably safe, although the ABS would randomly activate on the Volvo and I got rid of it. Consensus was that it would be fine to scrap the ABS but if I got in an accident it would be more of a problem than getting in an accident in a car without ABS.
I would really like to get a car to use long term that would be simple to maintain, yet reasonably safe, with as few “features” as possible. Obviously new cars are out of the question. Any suggestions?
Just to prove to the powers that be that I should in no way be trusted with a child, I drove my first child, a daughter, home in my 1988 Ford Festiva in 1994.
My dad had a Super Beetle in the early eighties. Loved it, never felt unsafe. But he never drove it on a highway. Mid eighties, I drove a different Beetle on fifty miles of highway. Even the relatively small trucks and SUVs of the time felt like they were going to smash me off the road. I’d pass on driving one or riding in one, now. You are probably a good driver, but the guy in the huge truck hurrying to an appointment might not be.
Keep doing what you are doing. You are a great parent just for worrying. Today we have helicopter parents who protect their kids from everything and then the kid is incapable of tying their own shoes. I’d love to find out how many of your fine smart capable and mostly sane writers interviewed for the job with their parents. I’ve had candidates show up for interviews with their mom and it seemed like I was interviewing her. None got the job as they would be working on their own in a independent situation needing common sense and self reliance and self confidence based on a real ability not mommy telling them how great they are,even if they weren’t. You can’t place your kid in a plastic bubble and over protection is as bad as abandoning them. As they age give them freedom keep an eye on them, how much depends on how questionable their decisions are. Otherwise you are releasing a baby into a harsh world. Basically Veal.
Whoever comes to a job interview with their mom should be immediately disqualified. If anything, for their inability to show they are capable of setting adult limits.
Reading the comments the term “survivor bias” comes to mind.
I totally understand the dichotomy but these days I tend to lean towards safety, because there are too many disengaged “drivers” treating stop signs as suggestions in 3 ton projectiles that do 0-60 faster than their reaction times.
My dad considered the rear seat in some of his cars as his ‘crumple zone’ and didn’t like taking the kids in it.
“ of course this old car is safe, how do you think it got to be an old car?”
One time I said that to somebody and when I stopped for a stoplight and they got out of the car.
Sure everyone here survived but we can’t ignore that every single car built today is safer than the top of the line luxury car 30 years ago.
At what point is it safe enough?
As the car was ‘safer’ than the horse and wagon, or feet or days gone by.
Are they, really? With all the infotainment and the need to remove your eyes from the road for several seconds to turn on the fucking AC?
Until factories stop using touch screens to control every stupid feature, cars are safer only in the sense that a distracted moron is more capable to survive an impact from another distracted imbecile toggling a screen.
Check deaths per mile from today and the 80s or 70s etc
I guess a higher proportion of distracted morons survive a car accident than they did before. If that’s not the case, then we are doomed.
The Brazilian GM Corsa or Celta. They are so dangerous that they could not even be exported from Brazil.
I have two daughters (14 & 8) so I have skin in this game. Conversely, we currently have a ’17 Pacifica and a ’15 GTI, so we’re not necessarily in a position to worry about such things. That being said, I’m not afraid of old cars (or the world at large) and I wouldn’t give a second thought to letting my girls ride along. If it is safe enough for me it is safe enough for them.
I’ve never gotten the whole “but think of the CHILDREN” nonsense. Children are easily and cheaply created by unskilled labor in mass quantities all over the world. They just aren’t that special.
Drive whatever you like.
On a surely to be almost universally reviled take: Which is easier to replace – a small child, or a fully functional adult?
Indeed. Which is more valuable, a child or a fully-trained doctor or engineer? It’s certainly not the child to me. Sucks if it’s YOUR child of course.
But now you bring in nature vs nurture argument. And the ones doing the most procreating do not have the genes you want to pass on.
Think Stellantis.
“And the ones doing the most procreating do not have the genes you want to pass on.”
THAT sure seems to be true these days.
Not sure what Stellantis has to do with this. I rather like most of what they make, but freely admit much of it isn’t boring enough to be a huge success, other than the trucks and Jeeps.
This is a rough one. I love a classic car, but I can’t justify the risk with my kids or my wife (or me as part of that family) anymore. Too many unibservant mall crawlers and fuckboi trucks rolling around. I think the least safe vehicle I’d put them in would be the most safe vehicle I could afford. Boring answer.
Suzuki Samurai soft top or CJ-5. They would have so much fun while learning the limits of soft suspensions. (Might need a friend from the airlines to get a case of barf bags though.)
I had a three point harness installed in my Oldsmobile so I could fit a child seat in it,my son loves it when we drive that car. As long as there is a way to reasonably install a child seat and some sort of seat belt in case of a crash I think we owe it to our kids to let them experience vintage cars. I guess my answer to that question is that the least safe car I would ferry kids in is anything with seatbelts.
I have had him on atv’s and tractors and stuff too,but I suppose the premise of this question is in the capacity of a daily driver.
I aspire to own a 2CV. When I accomplish this lofty goal I will take my 13 year old for a ride. He will be deeply embarrassed, and my life shall be complete.
I had loads of fun in what I now realise was an overloaded 2CV going on trips to the beach with my neighbours. Pretty sure it wasn’t supposed to seat 3 kids in the back, but I guess with the canvas top rolled all the way back and us three standing up on the bench seat, seating arrangement didn’t really matter. And for better or worse, we had a Renault 4 at home that often carried four in the rear seat – my three older sisters would sit and I’d lay across their laps, so the 2CV actually felt roomy on those occasions.
That sounds fantastic!
It truly was! I’ll never forget those trips to the beach, and I’ll always love the 2CV, even if I’m more of a Renault guy.
Kids really miss out today, given that strapped into massive kids seats in the back of CUVs with rear beltlines above their heads they can’t even see much of anything out of the car. And some kids end up in booster seats until nearly high school if they are rather short.
Some of my best times in childhood were me and my cousins and/or a bunch of friends in the way-back of my grandparent’s giant American station wagons looking out at the world going by, getting truckers to honk their air horns, and playing all sorts of games. Sure, more kids didn’t survive to adulthood in those days, but perhaps the quality of life was worth it vs. today when children are basically wrapped in cotton wool and never allowed to explore the world?
Uh… I daily drive my daughter in a Renault 4.
I think this is the meme that applies in this situation.
That’s a choice. And I’m not even thinking of the safety aspect :p
Hah! It was a choice for a while, but then my cars started dying and the only functional car I’ve had for over a year now is the Renault 4. Hopefully we’ll have the Volvo V50 back on the road by the end of this year, and then it will be a choice again.
Good luck! The V50 is such a great car.
Can’t remember where the quote came from, but I like the saying “You owe your kids the weirdest childhood possible.”
That means heck yeah, I’d let my kids ride in classic cars! To be fair, I don’t actually have kids, though I’d like to someday… but as I don’t actually have personal experience with the parental protection instinct as such, I’m not sure how I’ll feel when actually strapping my hypothetical offspring into an antique. But I do think I want to.
My personal family dream car would be either a Chevy Corvair Lakewood wagon, or a Citroen DS Safari. The Corvair Lakewood just has absolutely superb packaging no modern car can match, truly the most practical car of its size you could possibly drive. And with the air-cooled flat six under the cargo floor, you’re just a few suspension updates away from having a station wagon that drives like a Porsche 911! I don’t care what Ralph Nader says, that would be an epically fun family hauler.
And as for the Citroen, it may not have the same incredible packaging as the Corvair wagon, but it makes up for it with hydropneumatic bliss in the ride quality department, plus a healthy heaping dose of joyful French weirdness 🙂 I can just imagine the kids peacefully napping in the back seat as the magical nitrogen spheres soak up any bumps that might disturb their slumber in a normal car. Plus it’s practical – you can always start the engine with a hand crank if the battery dies or alternator craps out, making it relatively easy to get un-stranded in, and with the adjustable ride height even changing tires or facing rough terrain is a breeze!
Those two are also, arguably, some of the safer cars of their time period (Nader notwithstanding), with the Corvair’s frunk supposedly acting as a rudimentary crumple zone and the Citroen actually designed with safety in mind from the get-go, featuring an engine designed to slide under the car in a crash rather than IN the car, and also front wheel drive so it handles better in inclement weather.
But really, I’d let my hypothetical kids even ride in a Model T, as long as it’s a fun and memorable experience for them. Wouldn’t daily a car that old, but would definitely bring the kids along to get ice cream or whatever in it.
I don’t have any of the above mentioned cars yet, but even if I never do, I like the idea of taking my kid for rides in the ’66 Thunderbird I do have, or my ’90 Miata. Wouldn’t every kid love to go zoom in a Miata?
I guess I’m in the minority here but I drive a first gen Ford Fusion and I don’t really want to daily drive my toddler in anything less safe. That means modern crumple zones, strengthened passenger area, side impact airbags, and car seat latches. A car crash is probably one of the highest causes of death for kids so I feel like if I can reduce that by a meaningful percentage then I should.
Our other vehicle is a fifth gen Outback and it has more safety features in the decade between those cars. Better blind spot monitoring, active breaking and most importantly better crash test ratings. I really should drive my kid around in this car when I can but I honestly like driving the sedan more.
We used to rent the post facelift first gen Fusion whenever we could because they were such lovely cars. (We lived in Manhattan so no car for decades.)
As a proud farm kid dad here, the standard is pretty low, at least on the farm. There’s any number of open-station tractors they can ride on with me, which is about as bottom-tier safety as a machine can get. That said, I trust my kids…I don’t trust any other kids the same way. I’ve been very intentional about farm safety training, and my girls pay attention. It’s been drilled into them from a very young age that safety is of utmost importance. So yeah, I’m fine with them being on tractors, sketchy work trucks, golf carts, atvs, and the list goes on.
On the road, I daily’ed a ‘68 Dart up until 2018, approximately when my eldest was old enough to start complaining about the lack of AC. I have no problems at all with my girls riding in or on any of my vehicles, but again, when moving farm equipment from farm to farm, awareness and safety are vital. I don’t live in an urban area and would never consider letting them ride on a tractor anywhere but out on these low-traffic country roads.
Farm kid here too. Was driving tractors on the public roads at 10. Drove cars and various trucks on farm roads as soon as I could reach the pedals and see out.
On the other hand I knew maybe ten other kids that didn’t live to finish high school because of car accidents.
I raised my kids in NYC because I wanted them to be safe. They were taking the subway alone when they were ten. Much safer than the crap kids were up to in the country.
Times change. My grandfather told stories about scavenging nitroglycerin from the oilfields in Pennsylvania when he was a child to play practical jokes.
Looking at the stats, any given kid has ~1% chance of dying in an auto accident, ~1% chance of dying by firearm, and ~3% chance of dying from all the other stuff that happens. So in theory I’m locking up the guns and not worrying much about the car.
In practice, they’re riding in something with 4-wheel ABS and more than 2 airbags most of the time, unless I can get ’em on a bus.