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Uber with car seats coming soon to Orlando
- Thread starter wdwmagic
- Start date
DrummerAlly
Well-Known Member
I'll preface this with the fact that I'm a car seat safety lunatic:
How do you know the car seat will appropriate for your child? How do you know it wasn't in a minor accident? Expired? Cared for properly (did someone wash the straps with a harsh cleaner)? If the harness isn't a no-rethread harness, are people going to really sit there and uninstall the car seat to properly adjust the harness to the right height?
80% of car seats are currently misused in people's own cars, are they seriously going to be safely used in an uber?
How do you know the car seat will appropriate for your child? How do you know it wasn't in a minor accident? Expired? Cared for properly (did someone wash the straps with a harsh cleaner)? If the harness isn't a no-rethread harness, are people going to really sit there and uninstall the car seat to properly adjust the harness to the right height?
80% of car seats are currently misused in people's own cars, are they seriously going to be safely used in an uber?
HRHPrincessAriel
Well-Known Member
This is my entire thought process as well. I'd rather just buy a cheap one of my own, use on the plane and install myself.
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JWG
Well-Known Member
The same way you (don't) know in any other rental car situation from Hertz, Avis, etc. or any other cab company. Uber is no different than those as far as this is concerned so those who would do it in a cab or rental car would likely also do so with Uber.
RememberWhen
Well-Known Member
I'm also very uneasy about the idea of using an unknown car seat with my child. If we know we will be traveling by car we bring our own car seat.
HRHPrincessAriel
Well-Known Member
photomatt
Well-Known Member
I am a former Uber driver and a former taxi driver. I drove for both in the Orlando area.
I never offered a car seat with Uber because there was no room to carry it in my Nissan Sentra. I would never know what my next ride would be, and many times I would need every inch of space in my trunk for luggage. If I had a larger vehicle, I would have carried one and offered it to be used for free. When I drove a taxi, and had a large enough vehicle, I brought a car seat. If a passenger requested it, they were the ones responsible for securing the seat and then securing their child. I would always offer to take it out of the trunk and place it in the back seat, but that was all I would do for liability reasons. I had a new Graco 4-ever car seat, so the condition of the car seat was not an issue.
If I had children I would never trust someone else's car seat. I would bring my own, even if it meant renting a car.
You would be surprised how many parents just don't care about this when they are on vacation. I guess it's too much work to keep their kids safe.
I never offered a car seat with Uber because there was no room to carry it in my Nissan Sentra. I would never know what my next ride would be, and many times I would need every inch of space in my trunk for luggage. If I had a larger vehicle, I would have carried one and offered it to be used for free. When I drove a taxi, and had a large enough vehicle, I brought a car seat. If a passenger requested it, they were the ones responsible for securing the seat and then securing their child. I would always offer to take it out of the trunk and place it in the back seat, but that was all I would do for liability reasons. I had a new Graco 4-ever car seat, so the condition of the car seat was not an issue.
If I had children I would never trust someone else's car seat. I would bring my own, even if it meant renting a car.
You would be surprised how many parents just don't care about this when they are on vacation. I guess it's too much work to keep their kids safe.
JasonP
Active Member
You couldn't have said it better. I would never trust a car seat that I had no control over. No thanks.
COProgressFan
Well-Known Member
I'm detecting a lot of judgment from parents and nonparents alike here, and as a parent of 2 small (car seat aged) children, I just wanted to chime in with a different perspective. When it comes to car seats, I often find it's a touchy subject with parents who insist that THEY do everything right, and everyone else is somehow putting their child in danger. Parenting is hard enough without everyone else's condescending judgment. We're all doing our best.
When our kids were a bit smaller, we always stayed off property and brought car seats on the plane that we then used in a rental car. On our most recent trip, we stayed on property and did not rent a car. A few thoughts -- this required taking the Magical Express bus from the airport to our resort. These are charter buses, which are nice, but one bus we rode had seatbelts (that did not fit the kids at all -- the tight straps went right over their necks) and the other bus did not. The rest of the week we relied on the regular Disney buses for transportation to and from the parks. No seatbelts, hard plastic seats, aisles crowded with standees, and very often the kids would sit on our laps.
So I ask this question seriously -- are either of those scenarios "safe"? After making sure the kids are always in carseats at home and doing our best to always follow the safety "rules" of car seats for small children (leveling them properly, making sure the chest clip is in the right place, rear facing til age 2, no puffy winter jackets, etc.) it certainly felt odd to all of the sudden spend a week seemingly without any regard for safety. It certainly gave us pause, and I'm still not sure how I feel about it. In all honestly, we may rent a car again next time, partly for safety and peace of mind, and partly for the poor reliability of Disney transport.
We had a horrible experience with Disney transport last trip and we ended up getting a cab. (Actually 2 bad experiences, but one trip we toughed it out for our 90+ minute transportation "magical experience"). We requested a cab with 2 car seats and got a cab/van. Upon visual inspection, both seats looked in decent condition and I assisted in installing them. The kids seemed fine with riding in them, as that's what they're used to. Our trip kept us on property and was probably less than 10 minutes.
Again, were the kids at risk ? Would they have been safer on a Disney bus? I don't know the answer to that question and I suspect no one else on this forum really does either. There are inherent risks to riding in vehicles, whether our personal cars, a taxi, or a bus. We do everything we can to mitigate those risks, but we don't live in a bubble, nor would we want to.
I know I felt fine taking the kids in the taxi, actually probably a little better than on one of the Disney buses. So I welcome the ability to reserve car seats for Uber. There are times when Disney transport just doesn't work, and if you have small kids and no car, you're out of luck. This just provides another option.
DrummerAlly
Well-Known Member
By and large, I really agree with you. Everything you said above was very well written. I am also a little uneasy about taking my young children on Disney Transport Buses as well because if there were a serious accident, I can't imagine it going well, but like you said theres an inherent risk in everything and we are told by the magical transportation overlords that it is very small. You said above that you rode with no regards to safety on the Disney busses and I would argue that that's not true. The safety experts say that riding unrestrained on public transit is very safe and you followed that guideline.
I think the judgey parents you referenced above (and honestly, I'm probably one of them though I keep my thoughts to myself unless asked for car seat help) feel frustrated sometimes with parents who treat car seats like anywhere chairs for their living room rather than the life saving devices that they are. They're not for comfort or convenience, their only job is to save your child's life if you have a car accident. The idea that a parent would take information from experts and intentionally ignore it baffles me. I love my nieces and nephews and the fact that I know that they would be probably be killed or seriously injured in a bad car accident because their parents don't restrain them properly bothers me.
That said, you're right. I have two kids and a degree in physics but I'm not a car seat technician or manufacturer or crash test engineer. The best I think we can all do is use our best judgement and follow what the experts tell us is most safe, whenever we can, and the best we can. They say that we are very safe riding unrestrained in public Disney busses and the best we can do is believe them and use our judgement. After all, how many reports or injuries or deaths do we hear of from Disney busses and how many people ride them during the course of one year? Since I've read information out there from car seat technicians who say its very safe to ride on Disney buses unrestrained, and I don't see evidence to the contrary, that's good enough for me. Similarly, car seat technicians and manufacturers say it's dangerous to use a car seat improperly in a car. There are many examples of children being severely injured in accidents because they weren't properly restrained, so that's reason enough for me to make sure seats are used properly.
COProgressFan
Well-Known Member
I think we're all on the same page here. We all want to keep our kids safe, and we all want a convenient, hassle-free WDW vacation.
Getting back on topic, when I originally saw this topic, my original thought was "ooh good, another option for a future trip", not "who are the terrible parents putting their kids in an Uber car seat?!" So I was a bit a surprised at the some of the comments, and felt the need to chime in.
In the end, as parents, we are all going to worry about our kids' safety, in whatever situation they're in. When we grew up, we were out of car seats pretty much as soon as we could sit up! A generation before, car seats didn't exist, and neither did seatbelts. No one wants to go back to those days. It's nice to have options and ultimately I think this is could become one of those nice extra amenities for families with small children traveling in Orlando.
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HRHPrincessAriel
Well-Known Member
Who said anyone was a terrible parent?
RandomPrincess
Keep Moving Forward
They are in a safety seat you are doing your job as a parent. Sounds like a fun time to me!
COProgressFan
Well-Known Member
No one explicitly said that. The reference was hyperbole. Certainly not looking for an argument here, but there was some self-righteous commentary in some of the initial posts.