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New “Kids in cars” law in Washington State takes effect January 1
Below are the new requirements for children riding in cars.
Car seat rules change
Depending on their height, middle school aged kids might have to go back to sitting in booster seats. According to the Washington State Traffic Safety Commission, changes to the law include:
–Children up to 2 years old should be in a rear-facing car seat.
–Children 2 to 4 years old must be in a harness car seat, either forward or rear-facing.
–Children over 4 years old and under 4 feet 9 inches tall must be in a booster seat with a seat belt or harness. Many children will be using a booster until they’re 10 to 12 years old.
–Children over 4 feet 9 inches tall can ride without a booster seat, but must wear a seat belt.
–All children under the age 13 should ride in the back seat with a seat belt.
Drivers can be ticketed if passengers under the age 16 are riding without the proper seating or seat belt.
“These changes will help parents protect their children on the road,” said Dr. Beth Ebel, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington School of Medicine and member of the Washington State American Academy of Pediatrics. “This change brings us in line with current best thinking about keeping kids safe.” [bolded words mine]
Now, in your opinion, how will this law be enforced? Will the police and State Patrol be stopping random cars with children in them, to measure and weigh the kids, and fine the parents if they are deemed to not be using the mandated restraints? Please note all the bolded “weasel words” in the regulation. How long will it take until the first lawsuit challenging the regulation is filed? Will the plaintiffs have a chance of getting the new rules repealed or changed?
What do you all think?
Published in Law
Sad!
I’m all for having the kids belted down, tied in and gaged. Mine were in the days before seat belts, and old Buick with broad doors. Looked in the rear view, and no kid, looked over my shoulder and kid laying on door panel with head, one arm, and on leg outside the window. I’m doing about 70 on the freeway. I quietly told my older daughter to reach over and grab the baby’s diaper and hang on with all her might until I got the car stopped.
Managed to slow down and get stopped without the kid going out the window. Fortunately we were near an exit with an auto shop. I had a buckle put in for the older child, but a belt with a bolt under the back seat, and a harness, for shoulders and middle for the baby. She had enough room to get side to side of the seat but could not reach the windows. In 1963 no seat belts for kids. And she screamed her protest every time we went some where and I strapped her in. Gads, I was glad when seat belts and child seats came in style.
I doubt new regulations would affect either of us since we’re both adults (if they ever do, I’m with you – absolutely not!) But I think it raises a good question: When can a shorter-than-average child ride in a car without a booster seat? When they enter middle school? High school? Get their own driver’s license? Turn 18? Graduate from high school? Where will the line be drawn?
Kids will only ever truly be safe in yellow school buses with no seat belts and metal bars at face-height.
People who put kids on school buses for more than a half-hour a day, total, should be sent up for child abuse.
Maybe I’m the odd person out here but I don’t have a problem with any of those laws. My son is currently ten years old and about 4 ft seven and he’s about to outgrow the booster seat. So the 4 ft nine metric sounds about right. I have gone through all those stages with him. They seem about right.
if you are arguing against seat belt laws in general, well that argument has been lost for some two decades now.
LOL.
Again as an ER doc, I wanted to publish a faux paper that proved seat belts caused car accidents.
Objective data shows about 2/3rds of people actually wear their seat belts.
However when you ask people in the ER after a crash if they were wearing their seat belt about 100% of them say yes.
Res ipsa loquitur.
Lots of judges will be on trial then.
Hadn’t thought of that part.
And drunk drivers have never had more than two beers.
They don’t bother me, either. But they have some harmful effects on our country and our political system, so I tend to oppose them.
I’m not sure I get it. Our school district covers 200 square miles serving 1300 kids. The longest routes go 0ver 25 miles. With stops some of the trips take over an hour each way. Now, busses are a vestige of closing our one room community schools (7) in the early 60’s. I’d be perfectly happy to let parents arrange transport, but as of now the state requires us to do it. And all the new busses we bought this year have seat belts, but I pity the drivers trying to keep dozens of kids belted in.
What’s the proper seating for the 15 year old with her drivers’ permit? Does she still need the strap-in booster seat?
Most state laws have a cut off of about 13. 4’9″s is the height when an adult seat belt fits.
Most states aren’t Washington. ; )
So what’s that? 7th or 8th grade? Wow! As I said earlier, I’m so glad these kinds of laws weren’t in place when I was growing up, because I would have been one of the few stuck in a booster seat until then. It was tough enough being teased for my lack of height as it was. I can’t imagine being teased for still having to sit in a booster seat on top of that.
Sometimes the people who need to be sent up for child abuse are education bureaucrats who push schools into consolidating and making buses necessary. They are a horrible misuse of children’s time.
Texas independent school districts generally don’t have that problem. Bexar County (San Antonio) has 19 independent districts. Imagine: 19 school boards (133 board members), 19 superintendents, 19 IT departments, and untold administrators of various sorts. Pretty much every small town has its own school district.
My beef in the OP was enforcement. If these new regulations are to be enforced, every local policeman and State Patrolman will have to carry in his vehicle a tape- measure and a scale, to weigh and measure every child in a car. Why do I think that’s never going to happen?
That’s not too bad. Better than 18 districts, anyway.
I don’t think so; most folks stop at two but have physical room for at least one more.
That being said, it’s a factor in us probably stopping at four. Our van is paid off and we can’t really squeeze a fifth in comfortably.
I wonder if the percentage wearing seat belts would be higher if they weren’t mandatory. Hard to say. I wouldn’t put a lot of money on it.
I seem to remember New Hampshire was the last holdout on adopting seatbelt laws. They also had the highest Compliance
I was reading statistics on child traffic deaths just the other day, after a half-hour ordeal of reinstalling three different child seats. According to this data, child traffic deaths have declined sharply (60%) since 1975.
A problem in interpreting such data is that many variables are lumped together and so cannot be measured in isolation.
For example, the introduction of backseat laws, seatbelt laws, and child safety seats have coincided with various improvements to vehicle engineering for safety. A 1980 Impala has a rigid frame and steel bumper. It resists, rather than absorbs, the shock of impact. Modern cars are designed to crumple all around the seats and absorb the force so that passengers don’t have to.
The problem isn’t that extreme safety measures are available or normal. The problem is that so many standards are made mandatory and refuse people the freedom to balance security with other values and priorities.
Meanwhile, manufacturers and tort lawyers profit from the race to infantilize everyone.
Reading this made me flashback to a scene in A Wrinkle In Time when all the kids were outside, bouncing their balls in synchronized unison. Spooky.
Not just under 30 by a long shot.
I note that they also use MUST.
SHOULD is a muddy misapplication of compulsory language. ‘Shall’ is correct when compliance requires action, but most people out here tend to think colloquially, as in, ‘If someone were following the rule, a carseat (or whatever) would be used,’ and they substitute ‘should’ for this equivalence, perhaps because they prefer to avoid sounding too lawyerly if using ‘shall.’
Alternatively, since the rules use both ‘must’ and ‘should,’ I interpret the ‘should’ usage as a recommendation only, included in the rule to clarify the context in comparison with the ‘must’ context, for which an officer of the law would have less discretion in enforcement.
This use of ‘can’ where permission is clearly implied — and where ‘may’ is plainly proper — is irritating.
‘May’ would also seem more appropriate than ‘can’ in the second example, meaning that an officer is permitted to issue a citation. The thinking behind use of ‘can be ticketed’ is to advise of the possible eventuality (i.e., ‘could be’ would be correct) of actually being issued a ticket, albeit without the certainty (‘will be ticketed’) of it happening. Police officers can’t be everywhere. ‘You just might get by without being cited for some time — how lucky do you feel?’
Do not let the size of your vehicle determine the size of your family. Yikes!
I hear you and tend to agree theoretically. But speaking practically, what’s a family to do if they really can’t afford to buy a larger vehicle? Or don’t want to as the case may be?
Duct tape. It’ll solve any conundrum.