What are the laws around kids sitting in laps or 2 small kids buckled in one seat?

I know people are gonna flip out at me for asking this. Just curious. I see a lot of mom’s holding their babies with no seatbelt at all. If a small kid is waist buckled in with their parent (on their parents lap), or 2 small kids waist buckled in together (in one seat) and the police see this what happens?

Seems like this stuff is just randomly enforced.

Came up in conversation today. Don’t kill me.

5 comments
  1. I think you should add more context.

    In a car? Front seat, back seat? In the bus? Other?

    Ive had a similar conversation with my wife after renting a car. She wanted to stay behind with the baby and have our older one on the passenger seat.

    I refused as in my country kids are not allowed to be in the front seat until they are teenagers. (Not sure if 12 or 14, but basically they need to be tall enough).

    She was surprised as she don’t recall there is such law in Japan (she don’t have her driving licenses so she wasn’t 100% sure).

    However, I’ve seen her friends drive with the kids in the front seat, so I guess it’s normal here.

    I think law toward kids are much more permissives in Japan than in other countries, so I won’t be surprised if it’s allowed to have 2 kids buckled together, or one sitting in laps.

  2. Yes I think it’s way more relaxed (dangerous?!) here than Australia!! Not sure how it’s enforced…

  3. Child seat is mandatory if the child is under six years old. The law is that every person needs to be buckled in.

    The national police association says that 70% of people use child seats which honestly feels fake because it feels like I see an awful lot of young kids standing in the front seat or on the passengers lap. (Then again if they’re strapped in a child seat in the back you can’t see them so there is probably some bias in regard to which is more visible.) I don’t think I ever saw someone carry a baby in the passenger seat in my home country but it seems like people here consider it to be no big deal.

    https://www.npa.go.jp/bureau/traffic/anzen/childseat.html#:~:text=%E3%83%81%E3%83%A3%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AB%E3%83%89%E3%82%B7%E3%83%BC%E3%83%88%E3%81%AF%E4%BA%A4%E9%80%9A%E4%BA%8B%E6%95%85%E3%81%AE,%E3%81%AE%EF%BC%93%E7%AC%AC%EF%BC%93%E9%A0%85%EF%BC%89%E3%80%82

  4. Parents who don’t put their kids in the appropriate seats in the back are insane. That includes babies in papooses on a parent wearing a seatbelt. There is a very casual attitude to all of this, which I also do not understand. As a society the world over we have sort of deemed the dangers of just driving as acceptable. But turning your kids into possible projectiles because you cannot be asked to buckle them up is, at the risk of repeating myself, insane. People underestimate physics and gamble extra with their kids’ lives.

  5. 2 Childs under 12 count as 1 adult if I’m not wrong . So if your car have 3 sits (back) u can care 6 kids (under 12) + 2 in front … 8 and the driver 9. is kinda strange because law also ask for sit belts and kids under 6 must use child sit. So is nonsense.

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