Remember when you were 4 or 5 years old and would be standing on the front seat of the family car when all of a sudden your mom would hit the brakes and her right arm would fly out to keep you from hitting the steel dashboard?
That was the first child passenger safety equipment that I can remember.
For the past 10-plus years, I have been a Child Passenger Safety instructor. My role is to teach various safety personnel how to properly install and use child passenger seats and, more importantly, how to teach parents and caregivers to correctly install and use them. The technician class is 40 hours — yes, 40 hours — five days of intense classroom and practical exercise, culminating in a check-up event. Primarily it is attended by law enforcement, fire department, health department and social services personnel.
The common thought after they have completed this training is that they wished they had had even more time.
Many of us who belong to the opening-paragraph club did not have to deal with car seats, or if we did they were pretty much something to keep the kid entertained: fake steering wheel, or a serving tray affixed to a steel contraption that hooked over the seat so the kid could see out. Not much more to it.
We often refer to those times as the good ol’ days. Back in those good ol’ days, kids were dying by the thousands each year in automobile crashes.
Seatbelts were specifically designed to accommodate adults. Their primary purpose was to keep the occupants from being ejected from the vehicle because ou are four times more likely to die and 14 times more likely to be injured if you are ejected from your vehicle.
Hence, child safety seats. They are designed to be secured in the vehicle with the existing seatbelts and fit the child so he or she has proper head and neck support that is necessary to survive a collision.
California law is pretty simple. Children weighing less than 60 pounds or younger than 6 are required to be secured in an approved child safety seat.
But let’s go beyond the minimums and ensure that all children, regardless of whether they are legally required to be in a child seat and can legally just use a seatbelt, be safely and properly secured.
Let’s say you are caring for your 6-year-old grandchild who is just a string bean at 50 pounds. The law states that you can get by with just a seat belt. What is best for this child is to consider a booster seat and a three point restraint (lap and shoulder belt). Every vehicle is designed a little different — high backrests, wide seat bottoms, head restraints, lap belts, lap and shoulder belts, integrated seats (built-in child seats) — but the bottom line is that a kid is a kid. You are the adult and you are responsible for their safety.
There are infant seats for children weighing five to 20 pounds. These are always rear-facing. There are convertible seats for children weighing 5 to 40 pounds. These are to be used rear-facing until the child is at least 1 year old and over 20 pounds, then can be forward-facing. There are combination seats. There are booster seats. You start to see why the class is 40 hours.
What is the seat of preference that every kid calls for as they come running out the door? “Shotgun!” The right front seat is the most dangerous passenger position. I have always affectionately referred to it as the ‘mother-in-law seat’, but then again that’s probably one of the reasons I’m not married. California law is pretty clear on this also. Children meeting the requirements of having to ride in a child seat cannot ride in the front seat. There are a few exceptions that are listed in 27360(c) C.V.C., but for the most part, kids ride in the back.
I’ve always said it’s unfortunate we have to have laws to remind us what is best and safest for our kids. I’d like to believe that as parents and caregivers we would make the right decisions even if no law required us to do so.
Please buckle up. Make sure the little ones are properly secured, too, and go out and enjoy the ride.
Monty Hight is a retired California Highway Patrol officer and public information officer. He is the Northstate AVOID Campaign’s public information officer. He lives in Redding. More information on AVOID can be found here.
