"49 States Still Allow Children in Front Seat"

Matthew L. Wald
NY TIMES ONLINE
December 18, 1997

ASHINGTON -- When the National Transportation Safety Board makes recommendations, the agencies that regulate trains, planes and ships hasten to comply. But with state legislatures and cars, the going gets tougher.

In June, the board advised all 50 states to pass laws to keep children 12 and under out of the front seat. So far, only one state, Rhode Island, has taken action, with a law that applies to children until their sixth birthday. That law was in the works before the safety board made its recommendation.

"At least it's a start," said Barry Sweedler, director of recommendations at the board. He and other officials said they hoped such laws would be part of an incremental tightening of traffic safety laws.

But the recommendation combined two topics on which legislators are the least eager to write laws: how people should behave in their cars, and how they should raise their children. And while highway safety advocates liked the idea, because the risk of injury and death is about a third lower in the back seat, many said they had more urgent items on their legislative agendas.

In New Jersey, for example, one of six states where such legislation has been introduced, Peter J. O'Hagan, director of the Division of Highway Traffic Safety, said he had more basic problems. "We're trying to get the primary seat belt law pushed through here," he said, referring to a law that allows police officers to pull a car over if occupants are not belted. Currently, enforcement is "secondary," meaning an officer can write a ticket for a seat-belt violation only if the car has been pulled over for some other reason, like speeding.

"I want the primary bill above everything else," Mr. O'Hagan said. "I can save more lives that way." In 1996, 813 people died in New Jersey traffic accidents, he said; 400 of them were not wearing belts. Perhaps half of those unbelted fatalities would have been survivors if they had been belted, he said.

In North Carolina, the House passed a bill barring children under 6 from the front seat, but the legislation's chance of passage in the Senate is less certain. The bill's sponsor, Representative Debbie Clary, said newspapers in the state had printed articles featuring the hostile reaction of parents.

But attitudes are changing, Ms. Clary said. In her district in western North Carolina, she said, a mother was recently charged with manslaughter in the death of her baby in a traffic accident. The child had been sitting on the mother's lap in the front, rather than in the required child safety seat. "Ten years ago, I would never have told you I would see the day a parent could be charged for having a baby in the front seat," Ms. Clary said. "It would have been absurd."

A similar law was introduced in Tennessee, but faces opposition. State Representative Robb Robinson, chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said in a telephone interview, "I would hesitate to put that kind of law on the people."

A mother should be able to put an infant in the front, he said. If the baby was in the back and began to choke, the mother would "run all over the interstate," possibly causing an accident, trying to get to the child.

"I feel we ought to work toward making it safer in the front," Mr. Robinson said. But the auto companies and the Federal Government say that air bags make front seats too dangerous for rear-facing child seats, and that even a "smart air bag," which would not open if a baby seat was present, is not as safe as a seat in the back.

In Connecticut, Susan C. Maloney, program director in the Highway Safety Office of the Department of Transportation, said the mandatory penalty in that state for adults who do not buckle their children, and are caught, is attendance at a class on the subject. Many Connecticut officials said a law governing children up to age 12 was too ambitious, she added, but they will consider one in the spring barring children 3 and under from the front.

What inspired Rhode Island? To judge from the streets of Providence, residents are not obsessively concerned with traffic safety. Still, the law passed there early this year and took effect on July 1.

"It probably had a lot had to do with the publicity on problems with air bags and children," said David A. Schiapo, a program coordinator in the Governor's Office of Highway Safety.

Still, the Legislature is unlikely to take the front-seat prohibition beyond 5-year-olds, he said, at least for now.

"To have a law mandating kids 12 and under in the back is kind of hard to swallow," Mr. Schiapo said. "I know 12-year-old-kids who weigh more and are taller than I am.