Safety Seats

Remember the days when car seats for infants and children were considered an optional luxury, much like air bags have been in recent years?Those were also the days when children suffered unnecessary injuries, many of them disabling or even fatal, in auto mishaps that for adults would have been little more than fender-benders.Without safety restraints, children, with their light body weights, are easily thrown around in a vehicle during any mishap, even a sudden stop that does not result in an accident.

State lawmakers have passed legislation pushed by Maryland doctors that will change the state's child safety seat laws. The law requires children under the age of 8 to sit in a child car safety seats unless they are 4'9" or taller. The bill, pushed by doctors group MedChi, did not include requirements that kids stay rear facing until age 2 or ride in the backseat until age 13 as the doctors group had wanted. Maryland law still recommends that kids under age 13 sit in the backseat.

The manufacturer of Evenflo child safety seats is recalling the buckle assembly on more than 3 million seats because it doesn't meet government safety standards. "At times the buckle can look buckled and feel buckled even when it is not completely latched," said Jerry Curry, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. If the buckle is not latched, it can release during a crash. The seats, manufactured between April 15, 1985, and April 22, 1990, have black buckle housings and red push-button releases.

A Maryland doctors' group is pushing legislation to bolster the state's child safety seat laws, a move designed to better protect toddlers from head, neck and spinal injuries during accidents. The Maryland State Medical Society, also known as MedChi, wants the state to adopt recommendations made last year by the American Academy of Pediatrics. The recommendations include lengthening the amount of time young children have to stay in seats facing the rear of the car and raising the age that children should have to sit in the back seat.

The Maryland Safe Kids Coalition and O'Donnell Pontiac will sponsor Child Safety Seat Check-up Day from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the car dealership, 8800 Ridge Road in Ellicott City.The event is designed to "educate families on the importance of child passenger safety and to provide an opportunity to have their child safety seats checked by experts," said Barbara Beckett, Maryland Safe Kids coordinator.Maryland requires a child safety seat for children younger than 4 or weighing less than 40 pounds.

Maryland State Police announced yesterday that the agency will lend child-safety seats to motorists at its 23 barracks and Pikesville headquarters, beginning Sunday. Under a program funded by a $40,000 grant from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, state police purchased 154 safety seats and will have about five at each of the barracks, said Lt. Col. William Arrington. State police are also setting up "fitting stations" at each barracks, where troopers will inspect safety seats and help drivers install them, Arrington said.

THE WHITE HOUSE flack played it for laughs before the White House press corps, a calculated soft sell for an increasingly hard customer."You never know how to get the little thingy in through the back and get it stuck into the little dealy that goes in the side," press secretary Mike McCurry explained about the trouble with installing child safety seats. He started the audience laughing."You never know whether it's plugged in or not, and then your child goes flying over when you are turning too fast to the right," he continued.

The Anne Arundel County Police Department won first-place honors in a national program for its work in promoting seat belts, child safety seats and air bags.The department captured the prize in the 1994 Challenge Awards Program of the International Association of Chiefs of Police on the basis of its traffic safety programs last year.Operation SEE (Safety, Education and Enforcement), a child passenger safety program; and a seat belt checkpoint at Anne Arundel Community College were two of the newest programs that helped the county department win the honors.

When Diane Turner heard that four out of five child safety seats statewide are improperly used, the 40-year-old mother worried that hers was one.So she brought her Mazda, the seat and her 2-year-old daughter, Paris McKinney, to a drive-through safety program yesterday and watched experts install her seat correctly."

In an effort to curtail speeding and seat belt violations during the holiday weekend, Howard County police will target lawbreakers, concluding the department's participation in a two-month state-wide campaign and a weeklong national program.The Maryland Chief's Challenge is an annual program in which police departments set up checkpoints to target seat belt violations and to perform voluntary child-seat inspections. Police are also participating in a national program -- Operation ABC (America Buckles-Up Children)

People were yelling at him to slow down, but Buck John Benny apparently didn't listen. The 16-year-old was driving home Wednesday night from swimming at Patapsco Valley State Park, behind the wheel of an old Plymouth Acclaim packed with friends and relatives, including a teenager crammed in the back seat holding her 3-year-old nephew on her lap. John Ward, a passenger, said the car was racing south on Ridge Road near the Elkridge Furnace Inn....

As a child, Mary Canaan spent family road trips crammed with four siblings in the back seat of her parents' old Monte Carlo. No one used seat belts. And child safety seats? Practically unheard of. "I remember we used to put a piece of luggage in the back seat and that's what I used to sit on," said Canaan, of Pasadena, who now makes sure that her young grandchildren are always buckled up. Starting Monday, Maryland will enforce one of the strictest child-passenger safety laws in the country, requiring children as old as 7 to be fastened in booster seats while riding in cars.

Sheriff plans town meeting Harford County Sheriff Jesse Bane will hold a town hall meeting at 9 a.m. Saturday at Edgewood Senior Center, 1000 Gateway Drive. The meeting will include discussion of crime, updates on current investigations, staffing and budget. Residents can ask questions, receive sheriff's department contact information and learn about the agency's operations. Residents reminded of child-seat safety This week, in observance of National Child Passenger Safety Week, The Harford County Health Department is urging parents to make sure their children's safety seats are installed correctly.

Welcome to trauma-and-accident season. This summer, American children age 14 and younger will be rushed to emergency rooms nearly 3 million times for serious injuries - everything from car accidents to falls from skateboards to near drownings - according to the National Safe Kids Campaign, an international association dedicated to preventing childhood injury. More kids get hurt in summer than any other time of the year, pediatricians say. "You've got to anticipate the risks as much as you can," said Dr. Gary Smith of Ohio State University, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee for Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention.

Del. waitress charged with stealing credit card numbers A woman from Belarus who worked as a waitress at a popular Fenwick Island, Del., restaurant has been arrested on federal charges of aggravated identity theft - accused of using a hand-held credit card reader to steal the account numbers of customers. According to court papers, Katsiaryna Kabiarets, 23, who had been living in Ocean City and was employed at Harpoon Hanna's during the summer on a temporary work visa, told investigators that she was approached by a Russian man in New York and that he gave her a small device to copy card numbers.

A young girl and her baby sister were killed and their brother and mother seriously injured late Monday in a Ferndale automobile accident that police suspect was alcohol-related. The dead were identified as Tierra C. Green, who would have turned 6 next week, and 15-month-old Sania Bautista, who relatives described as chubby, playful and learning her first words. Dionte Green, 3, who was thrown from the car during the crash, was reported in fair condition last night at Johns Hopkins Hospital, while the children's mother, Lynette Wallace, 25, was listed in critical condition at Maryland Shock Trauma Center.

The Harford County Highway Safety Committee and MD KISS (Maryland Kids in Safety Seats) will check child safety car seats by appointment from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday in the vehicle bays at the Level Volunteer Fire Company in Churchville. To schedule an appointment, call committee coordinator Kathy Acquavella at 410-638-4924. The program is for parents and child-care providers to make sure child safety seats are properly installed and being used correctly in their vehicles. The checks are part of an observance of Child Passenger Safety Week, a national effort to draw attention to ways to keep children safe in motor vehicles.

The General Assembly gave final approval yesterday to legislation requiring children younger than the age of 6 to be strapped into safety seats while riding in a car or other vehicle. Gov. Parris N. Glendening is expected to sign the bill, which would make Maryland the ninth state in the country to enact such a law. "This is a huge step forward for children's safety and helps remove a very serious gap in Maryland's child safety law," said Del. William A. Bronrott, a Montgomery County Democrat who sponsored the bill.

CUSTOMER SERVICE increasingly differentiates businesses in today's competitive consumer environment. Civility in the workplace improves the quality of work life for employees, and the better the quality of work life, the better the quality and quantity of work. Relationship etiquette suggests that you get what you give: Give politeness and you're more likely to receive it. We stay civil not because others always are, but because we are. Yet I've seen a backlash to the expectations of exceptional customer service in more signs of what businesses won't do for their customers.

WASHINGTON - The federal government issued its first ratings of car seats for children yesterday and called for improvements in a life-saving product that many parents have trouble installing correctly. Only three models earned straight A's in the five categories rated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for convenience and ease of use. Two were Graco Comfort Sport models and a third was an Evenflo Tribute. "Our expectation is that all child-seat manufacturers will make A-rated seats before too long," said Jeffrey W. Runge, head of the agency.