More states are considering laws that would require children younger than 8 who outgrow child safety seats to be in booster seats when riding in cars.
Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Ohio and Utah are considering passing or strengthening laws on booster seats. Last year, Virginia, Oregon and North Carolina enacted legislation.
All 50 states and the District of Columbia require child safety seats, which secure children younger than 4 in cars, but 12 states have no law requiring booster seats, which are used by children who've outgrown child safety seats but are too small for lap-and-shoulder belts. Twenty-one states require booster seats for children up to age 6. Seventeen states and the District of Columbia require them until 8.
Child safety advocates say too many parents don't use car booster seats for children ages 4-7, exposing them to risk of serious injury in a crash.
A study last year by the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute found that parents were more likely to use booster seats if a law required it.
"These aren't bad parents," says Kristy Arbogast of the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, where research helped lead to the first booster seat law in 2000. "They just don't know. When you provide them with the education, you see these parents turn white. They say, 'Oh, my goodness, what have I been doing?'"
The Philadelphia researchers found that after more than 20 years of legislation and publicity, more than 90% of children 3 and younger were put in child safety seats.
In a collision, a standard seat belt can injure someone shorter than 4-feet-9-inches tall. A belt can slip from a child's pelvis up to the abdomen and cause serious injury to the intestines, liver and spleen, says Professor Ray Bingham of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. A booster seat raises a child enough to make the belt effective and safe.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates 41% of children 4-7 were routinely put in booster seats in 2006. About 350 children in that age group die in crashes each year, and about 50,000 are injured. Half the children killed are unrestrained.
Legislators who oppose booster seat laws cite concerns about interfering with parents, cost and the challenge of enforcement.
"What parent is going to carry around a copy of their child's birth certificate?" says South Dakota state Rep. Garry Moore, a Democrat who opposed a booster seat law. "All it does is give law enforcement probable cause to pull people over, and they already have plenty of probable cause to do that."
Judith Stone, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, says, " The problem is, if you don't have a law in place, the parents aren't really going to do it. The law itself acts as a very good educational tool."
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