Out of curiosity...whatever happened to just keeping the kid in the back seat with a lap belt? I was in a godawful car accident at age 4...and I mean godawful, t-boned on my side of the car by a driver going 55mph, and got out with just a bump on the head.

Is it the fact that they put full belts in the back these days? Or that cars are built like disposable toys?

-Mark

These days the "experts" will tell you that a standard car seatbelt is not designed for a child's small body; and most likely, in a crash, the belt will be covering the lower abdomen and not the hips where it belongs.

The experts say that the child will suffer internal abdominal crush injuries from the force of the crash.

That's what the "experts" will say.

I agree that adults should not have too wear their seat belt. BUT, if you don't, you are limited to what you can receive in compensation from a crash.

This would make it so if a non-belted driver of their own free will gets a head injury because they crashed with a belted driver it would be their own tough luck if the bills amounted more than the max compensation. That is what I could live with and would keep insurance rates down and discounts for those who use their seat belts.

My seat belt has kept me from eating the steering wheel twice and I'm glad for it. It kept my boyish good looks. Just my 2 cents.

The idea that it is perfectly acceptable for car manufacturers to sell a product that must be accessorized to be safe boggles the mind. It is a legislative and judicial fiat no other industry has been able to accomplish. The knowhow to integrate child safety features into the vehicle is out there and indeed available (usually as on option) on minivans and other cars attractive to parents.

The safety benefit diminishes with older kids. I guess we now have the govt deciding where the acceptable tradeoff is rather than parents. It is of course much safer to stay home but no one seems to be advocating that. I suppose we could have adults wear crash helmets and five point harnesses, but despite the clear evidence in favor of it, the idea has never caught on.

Decades from now, cars will be safe for people of all ages and sizes and people will look back on this era and wonder what in the world we were thinking.

Should we limit compensation everytime someone doesn't take every precaution available to them?
Maybe limit compensation if the person chooses not to wear a flame-retardent suit, 5-point harness, and helmet when driving?

Maybe limit compensation for people who slip and fall in the grocery store if they aren't wearing non-slip work boots with good ankle support, knee, elbow and wrist pads and a protec helmet?

I'd say that a responsible citizen shouldn't sue anybody for injuries sustained due to choices they made.

Your choice, but you don't get to sue if you screw up.

Now, if the grocery store had a leaky water line that created a mist, making the floor slippery and took no steps to fix it? Sue away.

I can't tell you how many slip-and-fall lawsuits we used to see when I worked at a large hotel in the west metro. EVERY time, we'd go to the tapes and see utter stupidity at best, straight-up fraud at worst.

-Mark

Does anyone know, how does this effect riding in the back of a pickup?

thanks

The term pickup truck has been added to the statute. It may allow for passengers in the bed, but I think this would be open to interpretation:

Text of bill that passed?

So... If a pickup truck has three people in the cab (all wearing seat belts), then you can have more people in the bed?

Wait, "seat vehicle"? That may limit it to only cars and vans with more than just the front seats?

Hopefully the seatbelt fine will stay at $25, without all kinds of surcharges. Right now our county hits folks $132.00 for seat belt, same as basic speeding I think.

Usually they stop people for speeding and give them a seatbelt ticket as a break. Same fine but doesn't go on the record as a moving violation.

Welcome back sobriety checkpoints! Oh, I mean welcome seatbelt checkpoints...

Will the $25 dollar fine be to smooth over the hassles people are going to experience while the cops look for the dangerous seatbelt violators?

Man... checkpoints...

Oh, I posted because the news showed checkpoints while talking about the law going into effect.

The sobriety checkpoints had stopped just before I started to drive.
(Just looked it up, they were found unconstitutional in 94. I started driving around then.)

True enough but I look back at what I learned to drive in (55 Chevy Wagon) and it wasn't user friendly at all!

No seatbelts, hard steel interior, iffy tires, single brake system and crappy handling by today's standards. That doesn't mean I spend much time wondering "what they were thinking"; things evolve, mostly for the better in cars.

I saw a 55 Chevy that some local kids drove off the road late one night; there was a perfect set of 1/4" deep tooth prints in that pointy piece of heavy steel that was the dash.

Would I like a 55 for a fun weekend car, you bet! For my 25,000 miles per year of freeway trips; no friggin way!

Then we could to on to wearing helmets and 5 point belts as mentioned, overweight people would lose health insurance as would smokers etc. Anyone involved in an accident where they where using a cell phone, changing a CD etc would be automatically at fault since they where not paying 100% attention to driving. And the list would go on forever.

I'm still miffed that uncle sam made my school change their name from the Indians or lose federal and state support, especially when the Native Americans said they didn't care??????

MORE government intervention is certainly what we need to keep us safe

Unfortunately, I understand they upped the fine as well- something in the $115 range was being reported on the news this morning.

I did a brief scan to see if the text of the bill that I read was the unofficial final version. I didn't find anything to indicate the fine was anything but $25.

Maybe the news segment was saying 'currently the fines are ...' ?

The link I had above may have been the senate's version. The house's seems to be the one that passed:
https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/bin/bldbill.php?bill=H0108.3.html&session=ls86

Interesting. The fine in statute seems to have remained at $25. I wonder if this isn't another of those things where municipalities have been writing ordinance violation tickets, rather than statute violation tickets. Many municipalities (including Minneapolis) were writing for things like "unreasonable acceleration" instead of speeding a few years back to avoid the hike Pawlenty added to the amount they were supposed to give the state of the ticket fees.