Ways To Cope With Accidents While On Vacation

By Author: Jo Alelsto
Total Articles: 405
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Vacations and holidays can be real fun, but it does not mean there's no room for accidents. It is true that accidents are accidents and will always happen, but they don't really have to — especially if it means these will only spoil your family's grand vacation getaway.

Accidents result in 70,000 deaths and 147 million documented injuries every year in the United States. According to the National Safety Council, deaths from accidents are more prominent than natural illnesses. Statistics can tell you that more than 2 million children die in accidents while they are on vacation. Why mostly children? That's because parents become unaware and remain undistracted especially if they are enjoying their vacation.

In reality, there's no such thing as accidents. Experts say that accidents are activities that can actually be avoided. Those activities that people call accidents are actually preventable. For example, when a child gets drowned in a resort's swimming pool, it is not an accident. Somebody should have supervised the child while in the water.

But despite many precautions, accidents do happen ...
... to children and adults as well, causing as many as 10,500 fatalities and more than 600,000 injuries each holiday year in the United States.

So how do you prevent these from happening and letting them spoil your fun? You should learn how to deal with them — and dealing with accidents means learning what to avoid so they won't happen. Here are a few tips:

1. Buckle up for safety

If you are on your way to your vacation destination and on a road travel with your family, always observe the number one rule — buckle up for safety. Your children must be aware of this and must respect it at all times.

Parents often hear how important it is for children to use car safety seats. Too often,however, safety seats and booster seats are not installed correctly, and that puts kids at risk. So, when installing the seat, it is best to make sure that you use the special locking clip when it is required for your car. In some cars, the movement of the belt is unrestricted, so the belt moves freely through the latch. With the locking clips, you can prevent the belt from moving.

2. Watching the water

If you have all of your family members on vacation, agree that one person is going to watch the pool or the beach once your kid is in it. In most cases, when everybody seems to be having fun or enjoying their grand getaway, everybody else thought that somebody else is watching the kids in the pool or the beach. If one person has the responsibility of watching the water, whether in the pool or in the beach, your chances of spotting danger will be more effective.

3. Be a road worrier

Every parent is concerned about children and traffic, and the old adage, Look both ways, applies for adults as well as kids. Pedestrian injuries are one of the big causes of injury while on vacation. Unfamiliar streets or distracted minds (due to beautiful sceneries in the surroundings) have driven the number of pedestrian injuries.

To avoid this problem, it is best to always pay attention while crossing the streets and keep up the hand-holding. A child may have memorized the rules about crossing the street, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he can see that car racing around a curve. A child's auditory and visual systems are still immature. They don't have the ability to make the judgment about how fast the car is coming, so they should not be walking without any kind of restraint until they are six or seven.

The main lesson here is that even if you and your family wants to enjoy this special event in your life as you relax and forget all the worries, still, you should not let your guard down. Value protection and safety as much as you value happiness and the time you want to spend with your family.
Jo is an author and publisher for ‘Villa Retreats' (http://www.villaretreats.com), a firm that offers holiday villa rentals in Europe and the USA. If you are meaning to visit Barbados then try and check out some lovely and elegant but reasonably priced Barbados villa rental, where you could make your holiday break there indeed a unique experience.