It still seems really extreme to me. Obviously I know there must have been studies done to back up the new regulations, but I have a co-worker that is 32 years old and is only 4'11". Guess it's a good thing she grew those two inches...she could be stuck in a booster seat in back!
My grandma was 4'11", and seatbelts did not fit her. My mom was 5'1", and I'm at the grand height of 5'3", and it wasn't until cars started to have seats that raised up, and seatbelts that went up and down in the slots on the side of the car, that we, especially my mom, fit into seatbelts.
And that's what it's all about, fitting into the seatbelt so you aren't catapulted out despite having the belt on, or in my case, not having the seatbelt cut my neck open in a hard crash.
If I were much shorter, I'd make sure I had some way to fit into my belt. In the late '80s, I was in college with a girl with a form of dwarfism, and she definitely had a booster type of seat so she fit into her adorable Cabriolet!
This didn't look right to me, so I looked it up. 4'9" is a very tall child. DGD9 is nowhere near that tall, so I was concerned.
The new law states that any child under 8 years of age must be in a child safety seat or booster seat. There's an exception, though. If a child is under 8 but over 4'9", s/he may use a regular seat belt.
Or, in other words, if the child is under 8 AND under 4'9", s/he must be in a child or booster seat. HTH.
http://www.chp.ca.gov/community/safeseat.html
We're saying the same thing. Or I'm trying to say it. I used an OR in there, and was trying to say it's one or the other, but I think it came out wrong because I used "under". My intent was the same thing, though.
DS is under 4'9", but he's 7. So if we use a car in CA until late May, he's in a booster. Which isn't truly a problem, since he's in one at home, but his uncle in San Diego has "fancy" cars and gets all peevish about the carseat marks on his leather seats. We discovered that DS actually fits the seatbelts in the back seat of my sis in law's Mercedes (quite perfectly, actually), as well as in the 3rd row of their old Durango, and they were ALL excited that I didn't have to bring the seat/booster anymore (my brother is quite rational in many ways, but uses our own personal past to "prove" that the seatbelt laws aren't reasonable...just b/c my mom never had an accident while he and I were sneaking off our lapbelts in the Pinto station wagon doesn't mean a thing!). Since DS fit in those specific seats I was cool with it, but since I'm not willing to pay the fine or insist that they pay it, now I'm in the sad position of avoiding a visit to my brother until DS turns 8, or dealing with my brother's annoyance. Blah.
)
