Baby on board

This is might be a fairly trivial topic, but why is it that we find the commonplace “Baby on board” and “Kids on board” notices in cars so annoying? George Carlin has called the former “the three most puke-inducing words that man has yet come up with” and here are two debates on the issue.

Well… what purpose can these signs possibly serve? Let’s have a look. It can only be either a) pointlessly boastful (“Look! I have a baby/children!”) or b) some kind of warning.

If it is a) then it is arrogant and an insult others, as it assumes they should care. They might reply “So? So do I”, they might not yet be in a position to have any, or they might be unable to conceive. In any case it’s totally unnecessary.

If it is b) then it is either (b1) a warning saying “Watch out – this explains why I might be driving too slowly, or badly due to being distracted” or it is saying (b2) “Don’t drive too close to me or endanger me”.

If it is the former, then frankly the person should not be on the road. Driving too slowly doesn’t help the children – it might endanger them – and if the children might distract the driver such that it affects their driving, something has gone awry. If its the latter, which I think it is, then this is wrong on several counts. First it is an insult to an unknown driver, assuming they would drive badly in the first place. Secondly, it makes the claim that a child’s life is somehow more valuable than an adult’s, and thirdly it assumes an irresponsible driver would even care about this issue (many would not).

One more claim has been made, which is that the signs actually do have some point and are put there so that fire crews look for the child in case of an accident. On this point I would say that emergency staff are probably professional enough to be able to check wreckage without needing help, if the crash was so bad that the sign was really necessary then it would probably not be readable and the child would be dead, and finally it might waste crews’ time, since I bet the drivers do not remove the signs when they are in the car on their own.

Baby on Board signs, trivial or helpful though they might at first seem, are actually another indication of people having a casual disrespect for others in society, and simply not thinking about what they are doing. Save your money.