Time to Buckle Down on Car Seat Safety

The world is a shifty, tricky little place. Just when you think it’s safe, it trips you up. One minute, you’re in a perfectly nice Honda, your perfect baby sleeping perfectly in his perfect little car seat with the little polka-dotted hood and the little perfect window shade so the sun doesn’t get in his little eyes, and then, whammo. You’re getting a parenting lesson from a cop.

Is this a drag, or what? To find out, we put the question to the poor mother driving the Honda, a perfectly nice woman named Debbie Iles. Iles, 36 and from all appearances an excellent parent, was taking 3-week-old Baby Matthew to the doctor in Santa Monica the other day when a car seat checkpoint (!) brought her to a screeching halt.

You’d think just about anyone with a car seat could pass a car seat checkpoint, but, as I said, the world is shifty, tricky, etc. Leaning in Iles’ window, his radio crackling, Los Angeles Police Officer John Nisbet (“Morning, ma’am”) found that Baby Matthew had been hurtling through the streets of Southern California in a back seat that was more risk-infested than a blind date with Jackie Chan.

Obviously content to just go on living in a fool’s paradise, Baby Matthew slept right through the inspection, snoring lightly as drool trickled down his little chins. His mom, on the other hand, was made to get out of the car for a discourse on car seat safety: The strap wasn’t tight enough, the car seat was on one side of the back seat instead of strapped into the middle--well, Nisbet could just go on and on.

Iles’ answer to the original question: Yeah, it’s definitely a drag. But more than that, it’s a surprise. Who knew that an ordinary car seat could have so many dos and don’ts? Who knew there were so many ways to incur a $270 fine?

Certainly not Debbie Iles of Marina del Rey, definitely not I and possibly, cherished reader, not even you. Afterward, Nisbet confided that the parents of Southern California were 0 for 100 the last time the LAPD did one of these checkpoints, last month at the L.A. Zoo.

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Today’s public service announcement--and in honor of the holiday, that’s all it is, really--goes out to all you Memorial Day road-trippers who are willing to put up, in this space, with a quick FYI. If there is deeper wisdom to be gleaned from a traffic checkpoint, feel free to add it; these words are meant purely as one correspondent’s nod to Buckle Up America Week in a part of America where, at any given moment, about a zillion Baby Matthews are out there on the freeways, obliviously taking a risky ride.

Some are, like Baby Matthew, riding under conditions that are basically safe, but could be safer; others are about as secure as your mother-in-law’s Lladro collection during the Northridge quake. All are playing scary odds. According to Stephanie Tombrello, executive director of Torrance-based SafetyBeltSafe U.S.A., 85% of the children under 4 who died in motor vehicles during the past decade in California died in crashes that would have been survivable if the kids had been properly buckled up.

So, you say, ‘nuff said. We’ll batten down the babies. Which would be fine, except that evidently, there’s more to it than people realize. Spot checks and researchers are confirming that, when it comes to buckling up the kids, drivers get it wrong an astonishing 95% of the time.

They put kids under a year old, for instance, into front-facing (instead of rear-facing) car seats. Or they allow the 4-year-old and her best friend to share a seat belt in the back. Or mom holds the newborn up front with the potentially lethal air bag while dad drives because he’s in a hurry and the baby won’t stop crying. Or the car has funny upholstery, with contours that are just right for an adult derriere but all wrong for a car seat, so that the baby tips over every time you turn a curve.

Or you let the 8-year-old sit up front, increasing her odds of death in a crash by one-third. Or the car seat is old and--well, these guys could go on and on. Evidently, it would make too much sense for parents to just be unyielding or for the people who manufacture cars to get together with the people who manufacture car seats and settle on uniform dimensions and standards (though they are reportedly now trying). The point is, the world is sufficiently shifty and tricky--at least when it comes to cars and car seats and Memorial Day collisions--that just when you think you’ve got it right, you’re wrong.

Hence today’s FYI, which comes to you in spite of the fact that your correspondent’s driving record will show that she has, for most of her allegedly “adult” life, viewed most of the motor vehicle code to be pretty much, um, optional and advisory. Do listen to Officer Nisbet. Keep the kids in the back seat. Use car seats for everybody under age 4 or 40 pounds. Buckle up yourself. And have a nice holiday.

Shawn Hubler’s column appears Mondays and Thursdays. Her e-mail address is shawn.hubler@latimes.com.