Honorable Robert Bunda

President of the Senate

Twenty-First State Legislature

Regular Session of 2001

State of Hawaii

Sir:

Your Committee on Judiciary, to which was referred H.B. No. 135, H.D. 2, entitled:

begs leave to report as follows:

The purpose of this measure is to require that all children eight years of age or younger and under eighty pounds be restrained in a child safety seat or a booster seat when traveling in an automobile.

Your Committee received written testimony in support of this measure from the Department of Transportation, Department of Health, Honolulu Police Department, Maui Police Department, Keiki Injury Prevention Coalition, and State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company.

Current law specifies that children who are under age four must wear a child passenger restraint system. This measure raises the age to eight. These children are generally too small to be adequately restrained by a seat belt and should be placed either in a safety seat or a booster seat in order to be protected from injury. A study by the Partners for Child Passenger Safety, a joint effort by State Farm Mutual Insurance Company, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and University of Pennsylvania, found that 83 per cent of children ages four to eight are inappropriately graduated to adult seat belts. Because seat belts are not designed to fit young children, they can ride up onto the abdomen, putting children at risk for intestinal, liver, spleen, and spinal cord injury in a crash.

Current law does not specify a weight requirement. Your Committee finds that both age and weight requirements are necessary to allow for variances in the size of the child irrespective of age. Your Committee finds that children who are under eighty pounds are generally too small to be safely secured by a seat belt.

Your Committee has amended this measure by prohibiting passengers who are age seventeen or younger from riding in the bed of a pickup truck.

As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Judiciary that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of H.B. No. 135, H.D. 2, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Third Reading in the form attached hereto as H.B. No. 135, H.D. 2, S.D. 1.