Videoing your kids when driving isn’t cute: It’s illegal

Social media trends are notorious for their often unsafe and dangerous content: videos and images frequently posted in the name of entertainment and advice.

One of these that I have recently found filling my Instagram stories is parents filming themselves while driving, along with their kids in the backseat of the car.

Often these are ‘fun’ clips of parents and kids singing along to music, or while having conversations that the kids in question, have no idea are being recorded.

Usually, while recording, the mobile phone is in a cradle in the front cabin and is re-adjusted or repositioned to capture both the driver and the backseat passenger action and then subsequently posted to social media.

Perhaps the most well-known of these clips is a 2022 Instagram post from Kim Kardashian, which shows her driving while miming to the camera, with a filter over her face, framing her phone so both her daughter North and niece, Penelope, are reacting to her in the backseat.

Needless to say, the now-deleted post, wasn’t well received.

One Instagram user commented: "Well this is safe..."

Another posted: "Watch the damn road Kim".

And another added to the criticism by stating: "You look beautiful Kim, but please don't drive and do snaps especially when you have precious cargo ex. kids in your car... This is how accidents happen and ppl lose their lives.”

And unfortunately, this last poster is right on the money. Because while the clips may be considered ‘cute’ or ‘fun’ by the parents in question, this trend is nothing but dangerous and negligent, putting yourself, other road users and your kids at risk.

Just like this video posted on Reddit showcases.

In this case, a driving mum films her kids in the backseat singing and dancing, ultimately resulting in a car accident. And while no one was seriously injured, the fact of the matter is, they easily could have been.

A spokesperson from the TAC says, “According to the Victorian Government driver distraction is estimated to be the contributing factor in 11 per cent of road fatalities and the cause of over 400 serious injuries per year.”

And a lot of this distraction comes back to the use of mobile phone use, with 1/3 of drivers admitting to using their phone illegally while driving.

While laws pertaining to mobile phone use while driving vary slightly across Australia, in NSW, a mobile phone must be secured in a cradle and even then, you can only use it to make or receive phone calls, for audio playing functions, or for navigation, meaning videoing is illegal while driving.

Videoing, unless parked, is also illegal in Victoria and Queensland.

The penalty for fully licensed drivers in NSW is a fine of $362 and a loss of five demerit points, in Victoria the fine is $555 and a loss of four demerit points and in Queensland the fine is a whopping $1,161 and a loss of four demerit points, meaning that not only is the action illegal but costly too.

But perhaps the biggest cost of recording these clips of you and your kids in the car is the price of putting their lives in danger, a very real consequence of distracted driving.

Senior Associate of Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, Allison Grimley says, “If you’re driving distracted and looking at your phone, you won’t be able to react as quickly to what is happening around you. Driving distracted means your reaction time is comparable to driving with a blood alcohol reading of up to 0.107”.

Along with the reduction of reaction time, the TAC reports the following impacts of distracted driving.

This really begs the question- are your kids’ lives really worth putting at risk, in the name of capturing content?

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