More Child-Safety Lessons from Britney Spears

Oops, she did it again. Front-page photographs in Tuesday's New York Post and New York Daily News show a fat Britney Spears in hair curlers driving her car with 8-month-old son Sean Preston in the back, sitting in a car seat facing forward. This may violate a bizarre California law that requires child safety-seats to be installed according to federal safety guidelines which recommend that babies up to a year old and up to 20 pounds ride in them in the back seat facing backward. You know so the baby's face can be disfigured by glass from the shattered rear windshield during rear-end collisions. (Yes, I'm moody today).

This, of course, is only the latest child-safety lesson that Britney Spears has taught us. I mean if it wasn't for her antics, how would we know it's a bad idea to drive with your baby on your lap?

"In one regard, she's done more for child safety-seat awareness than anyone else in California," California Highway Patrol spokesman Tom Marshall said Tuesday. "The fact that she's a big star doesn't play into it for us."

Yeah, that Britney Spears is a real humanitarian.

Perhaps more disturbing is the fact that California child safety-seat law is so vague it's not clear whether letting your baby face forward in a safety-seat is a crime or not.

"The vehicle code doesn't say you have to have the baby seat in a rear-facing position," but does maintain following federal guidelines, [her publicist] said. "The bottom line is that if an officer saw her, one officer could have said it was no problem, and another could have given her a citation."

...Spokesman Mike Marando of the California Office of Traffic Safety said Spears, if anything, was "breaking the spirit of the intent of the law, which is keeping the child alive."

I didn't know laws had spirits associated with them. Creepy. I mean it's bad enough my house is haunted by a Succubus. Now I have to worry about the spirit of the intent of the law.