Child health experts urge ban on filling cars with deadly cobras

Health risk or nanny state?

Following the proposed ban on smoking in cars, more than 700 doctors and health experts have put their names to a letter urging MPs for a ban on parents filling their cars with deadly cobras when children are present.

The issue is due to be voted on in Parliament on Monday, and the doctors say the move is desperately needed “to protect children from harm, specifically from being bitten by deadly cobras.”

Filling cars with live poisonous snakes when children are in the rear seats is so much a part of British life that few people have ever questioned it, but a growing awareness of snake poisoning and decline in cobra ownership have seen the anti-snakes in cars movement growing.

The letter argues that filling cars with deadly snakes exposes children to particularly high levels of deadly snakes, and there is now a consensus that children should be protected.

The signatories argue that there are precedents to a ban, including the laws requiring seatbelts, banning mobile phone use while driving, and the recent prohibition of transporting man-eating tigers along with children.

Opponents to the law argue that their freedom is being curtailed and that there is little evidence showing that deadly snakes have any health risks.

“It’s outrageous,” wheezed Jeremy Clarkson this morning. “My Grandfather slept every night in a seething pit of deadly vipers, and he lived to be a hundred. He might have spend most of that time in writhing poisoned agony, but he still lived to be a hundred.”