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Is your 4
to 8 year old child using an adult seat belt?
By Charles
Ofria
 Children between the ages of four and eight years old fall into an area that,
up till now, has been neglected by safety advocates. These children (in
the range of 40 to 80 pounds) are too big to fit in a standard child safety seat
and are too small to properly use an adult safety belt. They tend to
complain that the shoulder portion of the belt rubs against their neck and often
insist on placing the shoulder belt behind them or, in many cases, removing the
belt entirely. When they do wear the belt, the lap portion of the belt
often falls too high across their abdomen which can cause serious internal
injuries in a crash.
The U.S. Department of Transportation's National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found that while
injuries and fatalities involving infants and toddlers are down because
of aggressive education efforts, injuries and fatalities among children
between four and eight years old have not declined. In fact,
traffic crashes are the leading cause of death for children in this age
group taking more than 500 lives per year and seriously injuring
thousands more.
 To
keep our children safe, we need to make sure that they ride in
booster seats. According to the NHTSA, a child under 80 pounds is
almost always too small for an adult belt. These kids tend to
squirm, play and fall asleep while riding in cars, making the problem
worse. They also found that by using a booster seat, the child is
elevated to a position that allows the belt to fit properly with the
added benefit of allowing the child to easily see out of the
window.
I created this page after a conversation with Autumn Alexander
Skeen, a child safety advocate from Washington state who was instrumental in
getting her state to become the first to mandate that children from four to
eight years of age ride in booster seats. "Anton's Law" is named
after her son, who was killed in an accident because he was wearing an adult
seat belt that a paramedic found still buckled after Anton was ejected from the
car.
Ms. Skeen joined forces with Ford Motor Company to create "Boost
America" the most
comprehensive child safety campaign in automotive history to protect "these
forgotten children."
 On April 19,
2000 at the New York Auto Show, Ford President and CEO Jac Nasser along with Ms.
Skeen announced their campaign to distribute one million of these booster seats
in the first year. Ford has pledged a significant financial commitment to
provide 500,000 free booster seats during the first year of the campaign for
families that cannot afford them. Nasser is shown here talking to the
children who demonstrated the booster seats at the press conference. Left to right:
Ford's Jim O'Connell; Autum Skeen; and Jac Nasser.
Click here to enter the
Boost America web site for more information
Booster seats that were used in this demonstration are manufactured
by Evenflo Company, Inc.
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