With Limited Liberty and Restraints for All

The below is a reprint of a Valentine blog entry found at Everyday Texas Law.

The new transportation and criminal code statutes enacted by the 81st Legislative Session are in effect now. Are you up to speed? Here are a few of the common changes from last year.

1. No Phones Allowed. Unless you are parked, using a hands free device, or in an emergency, you can no longer use a cell phone while in a school zone. This includes calls, texting, games, etc. If you are under the age of 17, you cannot use any wireless device while driving anywhere.

2. Everyone Must Wear Seat Belts. Regardless of where you are in a vehicle, everyone must wear a seat belt or an appropriate restraint. It is a criminal offense for occupants 15 years of age or older. In addition, the driver will be held accountable for allowing passengers under the age of 17 years of age ride without wearing their seat belts.

a. Failure to Buckle Up Criminal Level: Misdemeanor
b. Failure to Self Buckle: $25-$50
c. Failure to Buckle Minor Passengers: $100-$200

3. Appropriate Seating for Children. Previously, once children reached the age of 4, they “graduated” from car seats. Now, Texas is addressing the gap in legislation to protect an even greater number of children. It is now a crime to transport children younger than eight years of age who are not properly secured in a child passenger safety seat system. No offense is committed if the child is taller than 4 feet, 9 inches.

Why the change? Keep in mind that the automobile industry designs vehicles with adults in mind (typically the 170 lbs adult male). Consequently the manufacturers direct occupants to use the appropriate child safety or booster seats per the owner’s manual.

The Tracy Firm provides an excellent magazine each year discussing “How safe are our children in our vehicles.” Please refer to their website for videos, charts, and other valuable information on what the Center on Disease Control has declared the greatest public health problem facing children, motor vehicle injuries.

Regardless of the child’s age, consider the following when determining whether or not a child is ready to use only the vehicle’s seat belt.

• Can the child naturally bend his legs at the knees over the edge of the seat when sitting completely back?
• Does the lap portion of the seat belt fit low on his hips just over the bony structure and top of his thighs?
• Does the shoulder portion of the belt fit across the center of his chest and cross the center of his shoulder?
• Is the child mature enough to remain properly seated without slouching or moving the seat belt into an improper position?
• Is the latch plate as far as possible from his center line?
  

If you answered “no” to any of the above questions, you should keep using a child safety restraint system to minimize potentially fatal car injuries to the child.

a. Failure to Use Child Safety System Criminal Level: Misdemeanor
b. First Offense Penalty: $25, plus other fees and a $0.15 court cost
c. Subsequent Penalty: $250, plus other fees and a $0.15 court costs

4. Open-Bed Truck Rides a Thing of the Past. Just because we are in Texas, I’ll include this last criminal code change.

Drivers will be held accountable for operating an open-bed pickup truck or an open flatbed truck or trailer when a child younger than 18 years of age is in the bed of the truck or trailer.

a. Criminal Level: Misdemeanor
b. Penalty: $25-$200

Now because it’s weekend of Valentine’s Day, I’ll end with this, slightly modified children’s poem.

First comes love,
Then comes marriage,
Then comes baby in a properly-installed-child restraint system-until-age 8-baby carriage.