The "Forgotten Child" Is Getting
Some Attention at Last
Booster seats now the law in some states

In 1978, Tennessee passed the first state law requiring children riding in cars to be protected by a restraint system other than adult-sized seat belts. By 1985, all 50 states and the District of Columbia had passed similar sorts of laws, requiring infants and, in some cases toddlers, to ride in car seats. When children outgrow safety seats, however, they are usually too small for seat belts, but few states require these children to be restrained by an intermediate system. Some states say it is permissible for children to wear seat belts when they are as young as 1 or 2 years of age. As of September 2002, 17 states permitted children as young as 4 to use seat belts.

The result has been what some researchers are calling the "forgotten child" syndrome. Research shows that children who are inappropriately restrained with adult-sized belts suffer needless deaths and injuries in car crashes. Studies also show that as children age, their use of restraints decreases.

These findings would seem to be borne out in the numbers of motor vehicle deaths among children of in the 5-to-9 age group, which is the primary age group for these "forgotten" children. While the occupant fatality rate per 100,000 population for children up to the age of 4 was cut in half between 1977 and 2000, the fatality rate for children aged 5 to 9 has stayed roughly the same (though other factors such as numbers of miles traveled by different age groups may affect the figures).

To address the safety gap in this in-between age group, policymakers are turning to a new round of regulations for the use of intermediate devices to take children through the growth years until they are large enough to benefit from the protections offered by seat belts. The device that fits these children's needs the best is the booster seat, which "boosts" the user up and forward so that the car's adult-sized seat belt system fits. Booster seats are generally appropriate for a child who weighs between 40 to 80 lbs. and stands less than 4 ft. 9 in. tall.

NHTSA estimates that only 6% of the children who could benefit from riding in booster seats are actually using them. Part of the reason for this failing may be the fact that government safety standards were only recently put in place for restraints appropriate for larger children. Another, related, reason is the lack of state regulations requiring their use. Only a handful of states, including Washington, California, Maine, Colorado, South Carolina, and Oregon, have passed laws to require booster seats for these in-between children. Generally, the children that fall under the requirements are older than 4 and younger than either 6 or 8 and weigh no more than 40 or 80 lbs.
 

In 1994, the federal standard governing child restraint systems was extended to cover booster seats for children weighing up to 50 lbs. There are still no safety standards, however, for booster seats for children weighing between 50 and 80 lbs., the weight beyond which seat belts are usually considered effective. Recently, in response to requirements set forth in the Transportation Recall Enhancement, Accountability and Documentation (TREAD) Act, NHTSA issued a notice of proposed changes to the standard that included use of new test dummies and improved procedures for testing child restraints, updated criteria for assessing child restraint systems' performance, and extended standards to cover restraint systems for use by children weighing up to 65 lbs.

 
Child safety seats represent a complex design challenge: to create a device that is easy to use, adjusts to children's changing sizes, is capable of being properly fitted into the wide variety of vehicles, older as well as new, on the nation's roads—and is affordable. In September 1999, all forward-facing child safety seats were required to comply with stricter head protection safety standards, which included the addition of tethers at the top of the seat that could be attached to an anchor near the car's rear window. The following year, the anchor was required in all new passenger vehicles. And as of September 1, 2002, most new child safety seats and vehicles were required to be equipped with a more complex system, Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children (LATCH). It is hoped that LATCH systems will make it easier to secure child safety seats and reduce reliance on seat belts to hold them in place.

 
Adults in the U.S. profess to believe in the need for child restraints. A 1998 Harris poll found that 90% of Americans support increased police enforcement of child restraint laws. However, enforcement is difficult, especially in states without primary seat belt laws. Officers making a roadside traffic stop could be hard-pressed to determine whether a child is large enough to be allowed to wear an adult belt.

 
Until seats are more thoroughly integrated in cars' design and made an automatic part of seating a child in a car, the use of child restraints in general appears to come down to seat belt use by the responsible adult in the car. According to NHTSA, a child riding in a vehicle driven by a driver who is buckled up is three times more likely to be restrained than a child in a vehicle whose driver is not restrained.

 

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