Bill ups age for child safety seats

BOISE – Idaho children 6 years old and younger will have to ride in approved booster seats or safety seats if Gov. Dirk Kempthorne agrees.

The Senate gave final legislative approval Monday to HB178, which raises the minimum age for riding without a safety seat. The bill passed the House earlier and now goes to the governor’s desk.

“I urge the Senate to pass this good bill that will end up saving the lives of Idaho children,” said Sen. John McGee, R-Caldwell, the bill’s Senate sponsor.

The law will take effect July 1 if the bill is signed by Kempthorne.

Idaho would become the 29th state to impose the safety-seat requirement for older children. Under Idaho’s current law, child safety seats are required only for children under age 4 or weighing less than 40 pounds.

All of North Idaho’s senators except Sen. Joyce Broadsword, R-Sagle, voted for HB178.

In an interview after the vote, Broadsword noted that 6-year-olds ride school buses without safety seats. “I just can’t see that it’s necessary,” she said. “I’m all for child safety, but I think sometimes we go too far.”

Washington was the first state to pass such a law – in 2000 – after a 4-year-old boy, Anton Skeen, died in a car accident when he slipped out of his buckled seat belt and was thrown from the vehicle. His mother, Autumn Alexander Skeen, crusaded to change the law – a movement that spread to other states.

“About half of all states, including our neighbors Nevada, Montana and Wyoming, have already moved to close these gaps in state law,” McGee told the Idaho Senate.

Booster seats raise larger children to the level required to make regular lap and shoulder belts work correctly.

“The issue is that most small children are too small for the adult safety belt to work right,” said Melissa Savage, an analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures. “They can slide out from underneath it, and they have no protection at all.”

Booster seats typically run about $15 to $20, Savage said. For a much higher price – as much as $200 – parents can find a convertible car seat that handles a child from 8 to 80 pounds, she said, by converting from a full-harness infant seat to a booster seat as the child grows.

McGee said the requirement just makes sense. “What we know intuitively has been proven with 20 years of data,” he said.

Unlike in the House, where some members complained that the bill was a sign of government over-regulation, there was no opposing debate in the Senate. However, the bill passed on a less-than-overwhelming 17-10 vote.

Broadsword said afterward, “I can imagine a mother taking a carload of 6-year-olds to kindergarten or first grade and having to have six car seats. … I’m afraid it’s overreaching.”

However, she said, “Moms are going to have to learn to live with it.”

Existing Idaho law includes an exemption for situations where every seat belt in the vehicle is in use as long as the child is in the back seat. That doesn’t change under the bill.