Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Editorial: Boosting the age on car safety seats
Not all 8-year-olds are the same size. A car safety seat law shouldn't act as though they are.
From the RoundTable blog
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At some point a child grows too large for a child safety seat. Is that moment reached by year of birth or by size of girth?
Virginia lawmakers seem to think there is one magical age at which it becomes safe for children to scoot off the booster seat and buckle up like an adult. They used to think that age was 6. Now the majority of them think it's 8 and have rewritten the law to reflect that. Gov. Tim Kaine should set them straight.
When it comes to children and car safety, size matters more than age. Any law, no matter how well-intentioned, would fail to do what it seeks -- protect children in car crashes -- if the number of candles on a birthday cake is used as the measuring stick.
A 7-year-old child can weigh as little as 45 pounds or as much as 65 pounds and still fall well within the norms. So too can a child's height vary nearly a foot at that age and fall within the expected range. Car seats may make sense for the slighter child well past an 8th birthday, but would make no sense for a larger child even if the law requires it.
Lawmakers did carve out an exception for larger children by permitting parents to obtain a doctor's note excusing their child from complying with the child safety seat law. Granted, parents and pediatricians should talk about safety during children's annual visits, but physicians shouldn't be recruited as an arm of law enforcement in deciding which children need to comply with the under 8 requirement.
Nor should parents worry about making sure grandparents, baby sitters, Scout leaders and the tee-ball coach have copies of permission slips in case the police pull them over.
A blanket age requirement simply isn't useful in determining when it is safe for a child to use the car's lap- and shoulder-restraint system.
Far better for lawmakers to address this by creating height and weight standards rather than insisting on an arbitrary age. Kaine should direct them to do so with a veto.
