Speakers urge back-seat rule for kids.

Byline: David Steves The Register-Guard

SALEM - Safety advocates conjured images of children's bruised torsos, broken necks and even death Tuesday as they tried to persuade legislators to impose stricter rules on where and how children ride in cars.

The House Judiciary Committee heard testimony on a proposal that would require all children younger than age 13 to sit in back seats. The requirement would not apply to vehicles without back seats.

House Bill 2536 also would require that infants in their first 12 months and any child weighing less than 20 pounds sit in a rear-facing car seat, and that anyone 4 feet 9 or shorter and weighing less than 40 pounds rely on a booster seat or other child safety system.

Advocates who testified on the bill included a doctor, a trauma nurse coordinator, a traffic officer and a lawyer who has represented families whose children have been injured in vehicle crashes.

Armed with both grisly accounts of injuries from cases they've handled and published research from health and safety groups, speaker after speaker urged the bill's passage as a way to curb injuries and deaths among children.

"We want to make sure kids are as safe as possible in motor vehicles," said Dr. Jim Lace, a Portland pediatrician.

In 2005, an average of five children age 14 or younger were killed and about 640 were injured per day in motor vehicle crashes, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Citing a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, Lace said children are 37 percent less likely to be fatally injured riding in the rear seat than in the front.

Ruth Harshfield, executive director of the Beaverton-based Alliance for Community Traffic Safety in Oregon, said children should not sit in the front seat because it places them closer to the point of impact in head-on crashes and lacks the protection of a row of seats in front of them.

She said rear seats aren't just safer for children, although children are more vulnerable than adults because of their size.

"We're all safer if we can ride in the back seat," Harshfield said.

Much of the research and testimony delivered to lawmakers emphasized the importance of proper use of seat belts. For smaller children, safety seats are needed to ensure that the lap belt crosses their pelvic bones rather than the soft tissue of their abdomens. Shoulder harnesses need to cross their clavicles, rather than their throats.

Oregon's law requiring booster seats passed in 2001. It requires children to sit in a booster seat until they are age 6 or weigh 60 pounds. But advocates for stricter standards said research has made clear that that leaves too many children vulnerable to injury.

Joanne Fairchild, a trauma nurse coordinator at Portland's Legacy Emanuel Hospital, said she often tells parents that the law may say 6 years old and 60 pounds. "But I say, that's not what's safest for our children."

None of the committee members voiced opposition to the bill. But some, such as Rep. Jeff Barker, D-Aloha, said they'd like to see it reworked to address situations like their own. He noted that his 89-year-old mother often rode in the back seat because she was smaller and more fragile than many 12-year-old children. He questioned whether such a law would force him to put someone like that in the front seat so more physically robust youngsters could sit in the back.

Another panel member, Rep. Wayne Krieger, R-Gold Beach, recalled that when his son was 12, he stood 5 feet 9 and weighed more than 200 pounds, making him a better candidate for the front seat than his sister was at that time, when she was 14 and weighed scarcely 100 pounds.

"I think the bill has a lot of merit, but we might have to have some conversations about how we could modify this in some way," Krieger said.