The Actual Proposed Amendment

(Part II of a series talking about the considered amendment to the Utah Child Restraint Laws. Part I here)

The Utah Legislature is considering amending the current child safety seat law (right now, all children under the age of eight must be in a child safety seat/booster). To which I say: "YAY!" Until I read the actual amendment. Then I scratched my head (in a most lady-like manner, I assure you), and said, "Huh?"

Let me summarize the amendment (the actual wording of the proposed amendment as of 2/10/10 can be found here):
There is an exception for children five years old and older. These children can use a regular seat belt under certain, very limited circumstances:

• The trip must be either to or from the vehicle operator's home AND
• The trip must be either to or from a school where one of the passengers is enrolled, a church sponsored activity, or an organized recreational activity AND
• The distance is four miles or less AND
• The posted speed limit does not exceed 45 miles per hour AND
• All available child restraint devices in the vehicle are being occupied.

Got that?

Let's try to figure out a situation where I could actually use this amendment.

Carpooling to school: Not unless you live within easy walking distance of every child's home. Because all trips have to be DIRECTLY to or from the driver's home, there can be no stops to pick up/drop off children at their individual homes. So, currently and under the proposed new law, I am illegal because I will sometimes pick J. up from school with Zee, and drop J. off at his home. J. is seven, and we don't have an extra car seat for him.

Carpooling to soccer/choir/Primary activity: Ditto above. Unless all the children meet at your house and pile into your car, and then all the children come back to your house, it is still illegal.

Driving my nieces/nephew to their house after playing at my house: Nope, because although we are coming directly to or from my house, we are not going to the school, a church activity, or an organized recreational activity (I doubt a "playdate" counts as an organized recreational activity).

Having Zee's friend J. come home from school with us to play: Yay, we have a winner! This one actually seems to work. We would be driving directly home from school, with no stops. Of course, I couldn't stop and pick up his little sister T. so she could play with Em, because that would be a non-direct trip. But I could bring a little friend home from school.

Running an at-home daycare: I imagine, that as long as you weren't a state licensed daycare, that this amendment would work to your advantage. You could take your charges to and from school without car seats (as long as the other parameters were met).

Now that we found a scenario or two were the amendment actually applies, let's look at the rest of it: the speed limit and mileage restriction, specifically. The speed limit restriction actually makes perfect sense to me. High speed crashes are more dangerous, and there is less reaction time to avoid problems at high speeds. To be honest, I'm surprised (but pleased) they have the limit as high as 45 miles per hour.

The mileage restriction is less understandable to me, though. Why should the streets around my mother-in-law's house be considered more dangerous to my children than the streets around my house? And how in the world would a police officer know that I was more than exactly 4 miles away from my house?

In my opinion, this law is badly written. How in the world will it be enforced?