Friday, January 02, 2009

Seat belt dilemma

On New Year's Day, we drove to Alor Star to spend some time with my eldest son Firdaus and family. This is the day that the govt enforces the compulsory wearing of seat belts for back seat passengers. Initially there were five of us going. As our car, a Toyota Avanza can seat seven people, that should not be a problem. But we had to bring along Fadzlil's wheel chair. The back row seat had to be folded to carry the wheel chair, that leaves only three seats in the second row. The seating arrangement was me and Shahman, in front. Fadzlil, Milah and Lina in the second row with Shafiq, bouncing in between them (unbelted). Then, Lina decided not to go. She said it was too cramped up. Shafiq is not so little anymore and gets excited when travelling. We sent her to her friend's house to spend the day. Fahmie was working overtime, so there was no one at home. Imagine, another family with four or five kids, wanting to travel together in a Kancil or Proton Saga/Wira . Because of the heartless 'seat belt ruling', somebody got to be left behind. They wanted us Malaysians to support the local car industry. They sold us cars that are affordable for the average wage earners. Then they make this unreasonable ruling, that keeps the family separated. Now Proton will be producing MPVs to force Malaysians to buy. Is this the reason for introducing this rule ?

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