Posted by Phil Lee (216.250.238.141) on April 08, 2001 at 12:37:
Negligence Is Not a Parental Right
Washington Post, April 8, 2001; Page B08
It was a windy day on the interstate five years ago, when my SUV drifted onto the shoulder of the road and I lost control in the sand and ash. My vehicle rolled three times.
When the Washington State Patrol officers arrived at the accident scene, they found me in the car, still held in by my seat belt. I was critically injured but alive.
Next to me, however, the police found only an empty lap-shoulder belt, clicked shut. Our 4-year-old son, Anton, had been thrown out of the car's sprung doors and killed.
The seat belt he had been wearing had failed to restrain him, because at 45 pounds, I learned later, he was too small for it to do its job. Anton was not in a booster seat.
At the time of my son's death, Washington State law allowed the dangerous practice of young children traveling without booster seats, restrained only by seat belts designed to protect the average 160-pound adult.
That law has since been changed, but in Maryland it remains legal for parents to use a standard lap-shoulder belt to strap young children into a standard seat. Life-saving car seats are required for children only until they reach age 3 or a weight of 40 pounds. That, among other gaps in its safety laws, is why Maryland rated an "F" in a report card recently put out by the National Safe Kids Campaign.
Last year more than 500 children ages 4 to 8 were killed on our highways. Car crashes are the No. 1 cause of childhood accidental death.
Medical and safety experts agree that many fewer children would die on the roads if those ages 4 to 8 who weigh less than 80 pounds and are shorter than 4-foot-9 were to travel in booster seats in conjunction with lap-shoulder belts. Yet studies show that only 6 percent of children who should be in booster seats are placed in them by adults.
Maryland's legislature recently had a chance to strike a blow against this unconscionable situation. Until a couple of weeks ago, it was considering a law to require booster seats for child passengers between ages 4 and 8 who weighed up to 80 pounds.
The safety measure, which could have cost parents as little as $25, looked likely to pass -- until March 16. Then Del. Dana Lee Dembrow (D-Montgomery) fired an eleventh-hour torpedo that sank the child-protection proposal of his fellow Montgomery County Democrat Del. William A. Bronrott.
Dembrow's amendment keeps the law from taking effect until two adjacent states pass similar legislation or until Maryland agrees to buy booster seats for all parents. "People can take care of their own kids," Dembrow said. "I'm defending the right of parents to be parents."
But negligence is not a parental right, and passing a law about child restraints in vehicles is not like legislating whether mom and dad have the right to let Suzy put her elbows on the table or whether Johnny goes to public or private school.
Sadly, because of Dembrow's action, many well-intentioned Maryland parents now may not think that the recommendations of safety groups carry clout, because the law -- the gold standard of today's society -- wasn't changed to require children to wear special restraints in the car.
Some of us have paid for that naive notion with our life's blood. Such was the case for me in 1996 when I buckled my son into the car without a booster seat for a trip to our family cabin.
Maryland won't be there to bury your child if he or she is killed in a car crash -- you will be, as I was.
Adults must protect the children who put trust in them. Take it from one who knows -- hindsight is hell.
-- Autumn Alexander Skeen
wrote this piece with her
husband Tom Skeen; she testified
in Annapolis in support
of the booster-seat bill.