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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 Will the plaintiffs have a chance of getting the new rules repealed or changed?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
Duct tape to make things stop. WD-40 to make things go (or fit).
LOL! That sounds like my middle child. Duct tape fixes everything, Mom. I swear if she ever gets married, her husband better like duct tape.
We traded our mini van for a Ford 15 passenger van that we got dirt cheap from Avis rental car.
We did stop at four kids, but I became the queen of car pools.
THANK YOU. My friends call me a car seat Nazi. I am VERY careful about how our seats are installed. My kids only turn forward facing at four years old.
As you wish. I am most definitely not a Libertarian.
This is true, but still not an argument against them, in my opinion. Laws are also guidelines and coordinate with morality and level of fault. If you get into an accident, and the other person were found not wearing a seat belt, the amount of liability might be offset by the other person’s negligence. Had he worn a seat belt it may have limited his injuries. If the law is not on the books, then I don’t think that off set can be applied.
If you love having children, are you really limiting yourself by how many can fit in a van? Sounds like a strange way to prioritize.
If not, she will just tape his mouth shut.
And luggage racks. They don’t all have to be inside.
Preach!
LOL! Knowing how fiesty that daughter can be, she just might.
Maybe they should carry a fold-up perp wall with the black measurement markings so they could photograph everyone they stop as a matter of course.
I was homeschooled but I remember vividly sitting in the car for an hour before and after classes while my mom drank a bottle of parent teacher conference.
If you roll them up in bubble wrap they are impact-resistant and stack pretty well.
Depending on your miles you probably qualify for a free upgrade to Empress.
<Backward Conservative Children joke>
Unless it’s a smart car.
When I was a kid we ended up driving 2 vehicles when we went to church. Generally throughout the week, it didn’t matter much, since there wasn’t much we did that required everyone.
As we are now, we have maxed out our Durango and taking two vehicles is less reasonable since we live further away from everything we do. This also means we cannot give anyone else a ride.
We are currently looking for a 12 passenger van. That’s going to work ok for us because of where we live, but I will not be trying to parallel park with it.
I’m not sure how other people deal with it.
It may be true that vehicle size shouldn’t determine your family size, but it does. Not solely, it’s part or the equation, but I think that’s just an effect of modern life.
Tf?
…
Are you serious?
Poor kids, never to see what is in front of them, only see what is gone behind.
I’m glad that when I was 3-4 years old I was able to stand up on the back seat floor (or the driveshaft hump) with my head close to my parents’ and get in on some of the talk. I don’t remember too much of that myself, but it was later my turn to watch my younger siblings get the place on the driveshaft hump to do it.
Later when I was in high school, stacking bales on the flatbed hay wagon behind the farmer’s baler, when the flow of bales would slow down enough to give me time to think, I’d observe that a false move on my part as the wagon bounced along could result in a bad injury or worse. It never happened to me or anyone I knew. I would hate to have lived without the experience of doing that kind of work. Nowadays hiring kids at that age to do such work is prohibited, and anyway that job is usually automated, and the kids are poorer for it. Fewer kids are injured or maimed, but they are also poorer for it.
I suspect most child car seat and booster seat laws are established as a result of lobbying by the car seat and booster seat industry to ensure that parents are required to buy more of their products. The products expire after a certain period of time so, the longer children are required to sit in the car/booster seats, the more times the parents will have to replace them. This is an excellent example of what people mis-term crony capitalism. It’s not any form of capitalism; it’s just straight up cronyism wherein industry finances political campaigns and then hires lobbyists to write bills and get state legislators (whose campaigns they financed) to pass them. Cronyism, straight up.
A side benefit to the car seat mania is that the young parents can consider themselves superior to their forebears who obviously never cared about their welfare.
It’s also very difficult to resell/donate used car seats.
My parents had a huge station wagon for their five kids, and it was awesome. Side benefit: none of us ever wanted to borrow it when we got our licenses. Added side benefit, I could sit in the rear facing back seat with the window open and sneak a smoke.
You’ll love your big van – I sure loved mine.
The bench seats in our 15-passenger van were labeled: the back, the back back, and the back back back (no last bench). Son #1 always had dibs on the back back back, where could have some blessed peace. Or pop off and no one could reach him. The last time we were in the van all together, 2009 (he was 19 and home from college), I threw my shoe at him from the front passenger seat and nailed him. I was very proud that I “still had it”.
I don’t think anyone will take them unless they’re in a sealed box. Too much liability.
Bet he was shocked! Good job mom.
I was in my studio, top floor of 3 story A-Frame, and just happened to be looking out the window when the school bus arrived and my girls didn’t get on the bus. They were creeping away through the trees. I went out the back of the house, crept around the back of the horse pen, where they were coming, and lo and behold, mom was standing there when they came out of the trees. I’ll never forget the shocked look on their faces, and I never said a word, just pointed to the car. They actually made it to school on time.
The rear of our station wagon was ‘the way back’.
When I was a little kid, I slept beneath the rear window while my brother lied on the seat and my sister lied on the floor (with some jury-rigged blocks and carpet to make it even). Sometimes we rode in the back of our grandpa’s pickup truck… without a seat, much less a seatbelt. Like nearly everybody else in such conditions, we survived.
That doesn’t mean safety precautions today are foolish. Though skyscrapers were built without safety harnesses, there’s no sense in foregoing harnesses today. But maybe simply buckling a kid into the backseat isn’t tantamount to child abuse. Conditions people normally survived within living memory should at least be deemed tolerable.
Imagine if car manufacturers simply designed all chest buckles with height adusters. I have seen such options for the driver’s seat.
My grandma was not even 5-feet tall. I suppose we should have kept her in a booster seat, facing backward.
When the government over-taxes they find that they run out of money, but here is no practical limit to safety requirements.