A South Florida personal injury lawyer has seen an increase in accidents where children are injured due to the fact they are not in booster seats because they are not large enough to wear the regular seatbelts that come equipped within every car, and they are too large to fit in small car seats that are made especially for babies and toddlers.
Today, more states are considering laws which would require children under the age of 8 who have outgrown their child safety seats be buckled into a booster seat when ridding in a car.
As of March 2008, Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Ohio and Utah were considering strengthening or passing laws on booster seats. In 2007, Virginia, Oregon and North Carolina enacted legislation requiring children of a certain height and weight to be strapped into booster seats when riding in vehicles.
According to a Fort Lauderdale injury lawyer, all 50 states and the District of Columbia require safety seats which secure children younger than four in cars but only 12 states have no laws requiring booster seats which are used by children who’ve outgrown their child safety seat but are too small for the lap-and-shoulder seat belts. Twenty-one states require booster seats for children up to age six and seventeen states and the District of Columbia require booster seats for children up to the age of eight. Many parents believe it is an issue of weight and not an issue of age because some seven years old are large enough to use the lap-and-shoulder seat belts.
Child safety advocates are quoted as saying that too many parents don’t use car booster seat for children ages 4-7, exposing them to risks of serious injury in a crash. These are not bad parent’s claims and Fort Lauderdale personal injury lawyers, they may just not know there is an option out there passed the baby/toddler safety seats.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates 41 percent of children 4-7 were routinely put in booster seats in 2006. Approximately 350 children in that age range die in crashes each year, and 50,000 are injured. Half of the children killed are unrestrained in the vehicles.
