Families with young children driving through New Jersey this holiday season should be aware of the state's tough new law requiring booster seats for kids ages 4 to 8, and out-of-state drivers are not exempt.
The Garden State on Dec. 1 became the first in the country to enact regulations that comply with the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration's stringent requirements: booster seats until children are either 8 years old or 80 pounds or 4 feet, 9 inches tall.
And while six other states -- Arkansas, Oregon, California, Rhode Island, South Carolina and Washington -- have passed booster seat laws, most are "5 or 50" laws. New Jersey's law has drawn howls from parents complaining about how it will complicate carpooling and other lifestyle issues, with many saying they'll ignore it.
Childrens' health advocates in Pennsylvania are looking closely at the impact of New Jersey's law as they try to come up with booster regulations here that will protect children and be workable for families.
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For more information
For information on booster seats and proper use, check out www.safekids.org or call the Allegheny County SafeKids Coalition at 412-247-7821.
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"Children are horrendously unprotected in cars," said Susan E. Rzucidlo, a registered nurse and pediatric trauma coordinator at Milton S. Hershey Medical Center who is heading a statewide effort called Boost Pennsylvania Kids.
"Children do not fit in adult seat belts and aren't safe in adult seat belts," she said. "From a trauma perspective, to me it's non-negotiable."
Bills are pending in the state Legislature that call for various cut-off ages on booster seats, but all have stalled in committee.
Boost Pennsylvania Kids has been working with the Pennsylvania SafeKids Coalition, insurance agencies, the governor's office and lawmakers to build bipartisan support for a bill she hopes will be introduced by Child Passenger Safety Week in early February.
Traffic accidents are the No. 1 killer of children, and booster seats are meant to protect older children who are too old for child safety seats (required in Pennsylvania for youngsters up to age 4), but are too small to sit safely in lap belts. Boosters cost between $20 and $120, although several agencies offer free seats to low-income families.
A 2000 study at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia found that children between 2 and 5 who use adult seats belts are 3.5 times more likely to suffer significant injuries in a crash. Booster seats elevate children to a level where a car's lap belt falls correctly across the hips, rather than the soft abdomen. Shoulder straps that fall across the neck instead of the shoulder can jerk the neck back in a collision, injuring the spine, carotid arteries, windpipe and esophagus.
While New Jersey has become the darling of the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, many of its citizens aren't happy.
Since Gov. Donald DiFrancesco signed the measure three months ago, lawmakers, state officials and child safety experts have been barraged with hundreds of calls from parents, school administrators and police officers.
Imagining that children will be having to "bring booster seats to school with their lunch boxes," New Jersey Assemblyman Guy Gregg, R-Morris, planned to introduce a bill to exempt parents who carpool groups of children to school or to other events.
The law carries fines of $10 to $25 for each minor who is not properly restrained.
Rzucidlo acknowledged that requiring seats up to age 8 isn't practical. "Most of these children are in second grade," she said. "But truly this is an issue of cultural change for parents to realize the injuries that children can have."
Although these injuries have been documented for children up to age 5, several issues still exist when evaluating booster seats for older children. In a statement in April to a U.S. Senate panel, L. Robert Shelton, executive director of the traffic safety administration, acknowledged that the agency didn't even have a test dummy larger than its 47-pound, 6-year-old model to test these seats for older children.
The safety administration also said so few older children use booster seats that it had been hard to evaluate their effectiveness in crashes.
There are other complications. Many booster seats are designed for lap shoulder belts, but such belts don't exist in the back seat of older models or in the middle of the back seat of many cars, said Phillip Morrissey, coordinator of the Allegheny County SafeKids Coalition. Other cars aren't large enough to fit booster seats for all minors in a car.
"There's no universal system that works in every car for every child."
Even so, he said, Pennsylvania's laws are totally inadequate. As it stands now, there is no law requiring children 4 and older to be restrained in the back seat of a car.
"The law needs to be changed," he said.
