Hard Choices in Child Car-Seat Violations : Prosecutors Weigh Family’s Grief After Accidents Against Deterrence

Several weeks ago, the car Margarita Vela was driving was broadsided by a hit-and-run driver a few blocks from her Sylmar home. Vela and her daughter, Maribel, 3, were thrown from the car.

Margarita Vela escaped serious injury, but her daughter underwent emergency surgery for a skull fracture. Maribel, who now is at home recovering, had not been buckled into a safety seat as required by a 1983 state law. It is an infraction of that law not to buckle up passengers under 4 years old or weighing less than 40 pounds.

The Problem in Enforcement

That the mother was not cited, however, illustrates the problems police and prosecutors face in enforcing the law.

Police investigators did not push the issue, they told reporters, because they did not relish seeking charges against a mother who they knew was already suffering the agony of having a child near death.

And prosecutors were more interested in securing the mother as a “non-hostile witness” in the upcoming trial against the alleged hit-and-run driver, than in punishing her.

“Our priority is trying to convict the real bad guy in this situation,” said Steve McKee, the deputy city attorney who handled the Vela case. “We don’t want to have to be fighting with our own witness.”

Vela was not at fault in the accident and her only infraction was failure to use a safety seat, a relatively minor offense in the eyes of the law. Similar to a traffic ticket, it generally carries a $50 fine, which, under the child safety law, is automatically dropped when a first-time offender buys a child safety seat. On second and subsequent offenses, the fine can be waived at the judge’s discretion as soon as a seat is purchased.

Automobile accidents are the leading killer and crippler of young children, and all states now have some form of child safety-seat law, according to National Transportation Safety Board officials. As many as 90% of child deaths and most injuries can be prevented by using child safety seats, board studies show.

Los Angeles police wrote 1,520 child safety-seat citations during the first three months of 1985, and 4,204 citations during 1984, said Lt. Ray Turner. The California Highway Patrol wrote 11,818 citations in 1984, and 5,316 in the first four months of 1985.

Non-Accident Citations

Most safety-seat citations are written by patrol officers and have no connection with accidents, law enforcement officials said. When accidents are involved, the decision whether to cite and file charges is made by prosecutors, depending on the severity of the misdeed.

For example, if a child is seriously injured but doesn’t die in an accident that was not the fault of the parent, the parent would only be cited for failure to provide the safety seat, said Officer Rick Carter of the CHP, who is part of a special team that investigates serious accidents.

But, if the unrestrained child dies, even though the accident was not the parent’s fault, the parent could face misdemeanor manslaughter charges. If the parent was at fault in the accident, the parent could face felony manslaughter charges, Carter said.

‘Not Hard and Fast’

Enforcing the law “certainly is not hard and fast, black and white,” said Glendale Police Lt. Mike Post, whose department has the reputation of vigilantly enforcing the safety-seat law.

In March, 1984, a Glendale woman driving a van was in a relatively minor traffic accident that was not her fault. The woman’s unrestrained 2-year-old child was thrown into the metal back of the front seat, suffering severe facial cuts.

A warrant was issued for the mother’s arrest for violating the safety-seat law, in part, Post said, because Glendale police “saw it as a real good local vehicle for emphasizing the need for car seats and our enforcement policy.”

The first year the law took effect, Los Angeles police and prosecutors took a similar hard line when a small child, unrestrained, was killed after her father ran a red light. Because the father had committed a moving violation besides failing to provide the car seat, the city attorney’s office charged him with misdemeanor manslaughter, said Deputy City Atty. Wayne Mooney.

Sympathy Factor

The case was eventually dismissed, in large part because prosecutors could not prove the father was responsible for the death, but not before prosecutors pondered the difficulty of getting a jury to convict a grieving father, Mooney said.

To Mooney, sympathy for the parent should play no part in the decision to file, however. “It’s no doubt that there’s grief involved, but if that’s the only way that other parents are deterred from not taking care of their children, then so be it.

“It’s the same issue as child abuse or battered children in a much subtler form. Does a parent own a child to the extent that, if he is killed (through the parent’s negligence), there is no harm?”

CHP spokesman Steve Kohler agreed. “When there’s a new baby, you take all the poisons out from under the sink, you dedicate a lot of time to teaching them to cross the street properly. And yet, when you put them in cars, parents seem to put their brain in neutral and don’t do anything to ensure their safety,” Kohler said.

Other Ramifications

There may be other ramifications for the parent who fails to use a safety seat for a child. Since the law took effect, failure to use a safety seat has been used in some civil cases to mitigate personal-injury awards, said Glendale Police Lt. Post.

As for Vela, McKee said: “Although it’s tragic that it has to occur this way, probably the mother of this child is now a firm believer in the need for the use of a car seat . . . If she doesn’t learn from her child being injured, I doubt if she’s going to learn from us issuing an infraction citation.”

On the advice of her attorney, Vela declined to be interviewed.