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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 Will the plaintiffs have a chance of getting the new rules repealed or changed?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
A few years ago we vacationed in Shaver Lake, California. We were maybe a mile from the lake. Every day we would load all the chairs, coolers and kids into the back of my brother’s pick up truck and drive til we were nearly there. Frozen had just come out; someone would play the song on their phone while I threw ice out of the coolers.
Then we would stop, unload all the kids and walk them past the guard shack.
Ask any one of those four small kids; it was their favorite part of the vacation.
We rode in the bed to my uncle’s farm where we baled hay.
The most important thing to know about hay baling is that when the wagon tips over (and it almost always will tip over once), to bail out of the wagon on the side going up.
I “inherited” my dad’s 1975 Buick estate wagon in 1982 when he got a new car. I was a sophomore in college. That thing was great!
It had a 455 V8 in it. I was going to college in Eau Claire and I could get 5 passengers in the thing for when I made weekend trips home to Milwaukee – 7 if I put up the wayback seat and put the luggage in a carrier on top (I only did that once – and ironically that was the best gas mileage I ever got: 15 mpg). Highway it usually got about 12, and city was about 5. It had an 18 gallon tank and I couldn’t make the trip one way without stopping for gas. I charged $12/head to the passengers which covered the trip and bought me a tank of gas for around town until the next time I made the trip.
The engine blew up when I was a senior and I got a little hatchback econobox that got about 40 mpg. Only had about a ten gallon tank but I could almost make the roundtrip. Which was fortunate, because I could only put three passengers in it.
In 1968 when my mother and stepfather were married for two years, we became a family of eight children. They bought a 1968 VW minibus, the last model with the swinging doors. On road trips my privilege, at eight, was to stand behind the front passenger seat holding on to the handle that was there and pretending to drive. No seat belt in as flimsy a car as there ever was.
Times have changed.
I’m number 7 of 8 children and this family of 10 would travel in 1 car. There were no seat belts in the cars of my young childhood.
Two memories:
My husband and all of his brothers grew up on a golf course where their father was a golf pro.
One of is favorite memories was once sitting shot gun and shifting gears so that his dad could hold a beer in his own right hand.
We had a Valiant sedan with ‘three on the tree’.