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PrintJEFFERSON CITY — Missouri children will be required to wear booster seat restraints if a major transportation safety bill expected for the upcoming legislative session passes.
A booster seat raises a child so the vehicle’s seat belt fits properly.
“This will make it a lot safer for our young folks driving across Missouri,” said Rep. Neal St. Onge, R-Ellisville, transportation committee chairman.
Currently, Missouri law requires all children under the age of 16 to be in some type of restraint and children up to 4 years old to be in a child car seat restraint.
Pam Hoelscher, child passenger safety coordinator for the Missouri Department of Transportation, said that children within the booster seat age of 4 to 8 are ill-suited for lap belt restraints because they can cause severe trauma during an accident.
“A lot of times, the belt will wad and cause severe internal injuries,” she said.
Each booster seat manufacturer has specific height and weight requirements, but typically, children between the ages of 4 and 8, who are under 4 feet 9 inches tall, are able to wear booster seat restraints, Hoelscher said.
In 2004, there were nine traffic fatalities and 1,645 injuries involving children between the ages of 4 and 8 in Missouri. In only one of the nine fatalities was the child in a restraint, Hoelscher said.
“It is beneficial and lifesaving to require booster seats,” Hoelscher said. She said 33 other states have booster seat requirements.
The bill will also include a substantial increase in fines and more points of infractions against drivers for speeding in work zones, St. Onge said.
“We are getting too many workers and motorists injured in work zones,” he said. “There seems to be a disregard for posted speed limits and cautions.”
Scott Stotlemeyer, a Missouri Transportation Department technical support engineer, said 28 people were killed in work zones in 2004. Stotlemeyer said most of the accidents were caused by careless driving.
St. Onge said the harsher penalties are needed because of the increase in work zones across the state after Amendment 3, an extensive roadway improvement plan passed last year.
The safety bill seeks to make it illegal for drivers to pass over the double yellow line on roadways. St. Onge said he was surprised that this was not already a law.
“The double yellow line up to this point was used to indicate bad areas to be driving on the left-hand side of the road because there can be vehicles coming that you can’t see,” said Lt. Tim Hull, spokesman for the Missouri Highway Patrol.
The legislation would make the safety theory behind the double yellow lines enforceable, Hull said.
St. Onge said the bill prohibits trucks from driving in the left lane of three-lane highways.
“Keeping some distance between cars and trucks just keeps everything safer,” Onge said.
Hull said the effectiveness of such a law is tough to determine because the differences in traffic levels throughout the day make it difficult for trucks to remain in one lane.
“In some cases, it might make the highway safer and in others, it might not make any difference at all,” Hull said.
St. Onge said all the measures will be included in one safety bill, and parts of it will be officially introduced within the next couple weeks. The booster seat requirement could be introduced as early as today, St. Onge said. Pre-filing of bills for the 2006 legislative session begins today.
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