The Roanoke Times

Fulton Waid straps his son, Lucas, 4, into his car seat.

Message board

• Is your 7-year-old too big for this law?

The child car seat law

• The old law: Children under 6 had to be in a child seat or booster seat when in a car
• The new law: Beginning Sunday, children under 8 must be in a child or booster seat.
• The exception: Parents who obtain a doctor’s note will be exempt. The note must be in the car at all times.
• Children can no longer ride unrestrained in truck or SUV cargo areas
• Rear-facing car seats must be in a vehicle’s back seat, unless it has no back seat

Child seat fit stations in this region

• Blacksburg- Virginia Tech Polic Department 540-231-6411
• Franklin Fire Department 757-562-8590
• Franklin County-Perinatal Education Center 540-489-1800
• Roanoke County- Cave Springs Fire Station 540-562-3265
• Roanoke County- Hollins Fire Station 540-562-3265
• For a list of other fit that will check installation of car seats for free, visit vahealth.org

Free/reduced price car seats

• Child seats and booster seats have a wide price range. Some discount stores charge as little as $14 for a basic booster seat. But fancy child seats can cost as much as $250. The Virginia Department of Health has free car seats for qualified low-income families. For more information, call 1-800-732-8333.

After Autumn Hiduskey was in a car accident with her 3-year-old son, Erik, she realized the value of child car seats.

If Erik had not been in the car seat, she said, he could have been badly injured. So she always makes her children buckle up.

"It's definitely something to take seriously," the Roanoke mother of two said Wednesday afternoon, as she picked her son up from day care. "We need to keep them safe."

That is why Hiduskey is not troubled with a new law that takes effect Sunday and requires all children younger than 8 to be strapped in car seats or booster seats. Drivers who ignore the law are subject to fines of $50, but a violation won't add points to a driver's record.

Under the old law, all children younger than 6 had to be secured in child restraint devices.

The new law puts Virginia with 13 other states that require children 7 and younger to be in some type of vehicle child restraint.

Only Tennessee and Wyoming, both of which require children to be in car or booster seats until they're 9, have stricter laws, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Some states allow motorists to chuck the car seats when children turn 4.

House Majority Leader Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, voted against the bill. He said he might have favored it had the law taken into consideration a child's weight, height and a family's financial means.

"I think instead of age we should have went with height data," he said. "I understand the problem but if you have large children, this will be inconvenient and even detrimental."

Griffith, a father of two with one on the way, said the new law will be a hassle for parents with big children. They would need to carry a doctor's note with them to be exempt from the law.

"You've got a lot of kids that aren't going to be small enough to fit in those seats," he said. "Every kid is not the same."

Families who have mid-size cars and more than two children under 8 might now have to look for something bigger, said Griffith, who drives a Volkswagen Passat sedan. Some families, he added, may not be able to afford a new vehicle.

"Where am I going to put the third seat?" he said. "I think a lot of people will have this problem, too, and this disproportionately affects middle-class income people."

But Del. Jim Shuler, D-Blacksburg, said it's asinine to think the law would require people to purchase a new car.

"That's a lame excuse," said Shuler, who voted for the law. "I think he may have somewhat of a valid point there but don't we all buckle up in a vehicle? I just don't see where this is forcing anybody to do anything that they shouldn't already be doing besides purchasing a booster seat."

Shuler said federal transportation officials and other organizations made the case to the Virginia General Assembly that the law should be changed.

"We're not forcing anybody to do anything that isn't to their best benefit," he said. "It's just like stopping at a stop sign. We all do it for a reason," he said.

Tobey Allen, child passenger safety coordinator for the Virginia Department of Health, agrees with Shuler.

Children are too small, she said, to be fully secure under a safety belt.

"With the extra two to three years on there, it will help them to grow into wearing the seat belt properly," she said. "When they are younger the seat belt doesn't come across their chest properly."

But child seats must be used appropriately to be effective, Allen noted. There are right ways and wrong ways to secure them in cars. Virginia maintains a number of "fit stations" around the state where parents can check to see if their child seats are installed correctly.

Andrew Craig of Roanoke, who was picking up his two children from day care Wednesday, said bring the law on.

"It wasn't an issue in my day," the father of two young girls said as he was preparing to drive off -- in a truck with no car seats.

"Today, it is an issue. This doesn't happen without reason."