Aside from New Hampshire, every State in the union (and Washington D.C.) has a seat belt law for front-seat occupants. But the laws for rear-seat occupants vary wildly between States. In Iowa, for example, there are no laws against riding beltless in the rear seats. But places like Maine, New York, and Oregon require all occupants to be wearing seat belts, no matter where they are in the car.
Things get more complicated once age comes into the equation. In Michigan, for example, you don’t have to wear a seat belt in the rear … so long as you’re 16 years old or older. If you’re under 16, you have to wear a seat belt, no matter where you’re sitting. Many states have similar age-based laws.
Then there are child seat and booster seat laws. Most States have laws that require children under 8 years old or under 4’9″ to use booster seats. California is one such State. But thanks to a new law signed by the Governor back in October, children as old as 16 might soon need to use booster seats if they can’t satisfy the law’s new criteria.
No Set Numbers, Just Smart Parameters
Bill AB 435, which was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom and set to take effect on January 1, 2027, was put in place to better ensure that children between eight years old and 16 years old are being afforded the same protections as their younger counterparts. Lawmakers likely discovered that the body types for some children in that age range were still unsuitable for adult passenger restraints.
Instead of increasing the height cutoff requirements, the state has identified five specific parameters that must be met for a child to ride in a vehicle without any additional equipment. And they all seem pretty sensible:
- The child can sit all the way back against the seat
- The child’s knees bend over the edge of the seat
- The shoulder belt sits snugly across the center of the child’s chest and shoulder, not at the child’s neck
- The lap belt is as low as possible and is touching the child’s thighs (not the stomach)
- The child can stay seated in this position for the entirety of the trip
If the child doesn’t meet all five of these criteria, they’ll have to use a booster seat. The driver of a vehicle caught with a child riding in the car and not meeting the criteria could face a fine of up to $490.
Basically, the State just wants to make sure your kid is big enough to sit in a full-size car seat properly. Seat belts, used improperly (like resting on the neck or stomach), can have catastrophic effects in a crash. By putting these common-sense rules in place, both parents and police can quickly and reliably determine whether or not a child actually needs a booster seat, regardless of their age or height.
Won’t You Think Of The Children?
While I’m all for making sure kids are as safe as possible while riding in a vehicle, I feel a little bit bad for kids who might now need to start using booster seats, even as teenagers.
I remember, as a kid, finally being able to ride in a car for the first time without having to get into a booster seat. It might sound like a small thing, but it felt like a rite of passage and part of growing up. Even though I was just nine years old, I felt like an adult. Having to go from recently graduated to normal seating back to a booster seat would be pretty upsetting, to me, at least.
Also, having to ride in a booster seat as a 16-year-old, a.k.a. a sophomore in high school, seems like it’d be the most embarrassing thing on the planet. I wouldn’t put it past any of my high school friends to make fun of me endlessly if they saw me hop up into a booster seat in the back seat of my parents’ car after school. Children are cruel. But at the end of the day, I’d rather my kid be bullied and safely secured in the car.
Top graphic images: Stock.Adobe.com
I think the people yelling at gubamint here are missing the point that it is odd that cars wouldn’t have proper protective systems for people of the edges of the height distribution. With all the technology advances there has got to be a better way than using a patch.
In europe some countries have it limited to 150cm or 12yo but if you were too small its not because you turn older that you’re safe, even if you’re an adult. Seems to me like it starts just becoming acceptable to have a teenager – or adult passenger – die in the car than a child.
Also laughing at the people saying “i survived riding in the back of a truck” or the like; i survived riding in the back of my dad’s griffith 500, yet had he got in one of the many accidents he had with it while i were there i’d have died. Many people die in car crashes they just dont get the luck to reply to these posts
Has any automaker ever developed adjustable rear belts/seats to address this sort of thing? Seems like something Volvo would have put in a concept car at some point. It would be a much less embarrassing solution to ill-fitting seatbelts.
I’ve been sarcastically making a joke about this for years and here we are in this reality. Once again, I have the complete opposite reaction and will have to edit this carefully to remain as civil as I can manage. The small kid is already getting shit and being left out of social situations for being small and now they’re to be insulted and have their self esteem further damaged by this “only thinking of your welfare” BS by parasite politicians who claim the damage is worth the tradeoff for the very unlikely chance they’re involved in a crash and the even further remote possibility that some piece of plastic giving them an extra couple inches of height makes a damn bit of difference in what happens to them in said unlikely event. Meanwhile, you’re all but guaranteeing even more emotional damage that will haunt them and perhaps hold them back for life, possibly even contributing to turning to drugs or other self-harm. The odds are not difficult to figure here, but then again, millions of people pin their future hopes on actually winning the lottery, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I also wouldn’t doubt that the real reason for this is that some dirtbag company that builds these kid seats is donating money to the politician’s campaign. As a kid I wouldn’t have wanted this (thankfully, I was tall) and I wouldn’t want this for mine. Living is in itself a risk, so maybe try to enjoy the time you have or at least minimize the emotional damage so you can enjoy the enjoyable moments when they make themselves available. Besides, you get some kid with maybe a little bit of something else going on who takes their pain and transforms it into external anger rather than internalizing it and that’s one way to get violent public events “nobody saw coming”. Extreme coddling, obsession with safety, control and curation of every moment of a kids’ day, fear of failure, and hair-trigger fear of the slightest danger when danger is inherent to life is a major reason we have generations of unhappy, fragile kids who feel unseen, who have no idea who they are, and no idea how to find out. It’s not their fault, it’s ours (well, not mine—I don’t have kids, partly for reasons such as this).
Just a question for the crowd. I have a 1990 MR2 (no rear seat). Can my grand kid (7 year old) ride with me? Colorado if it makes a difference.
I remember at age 9 riding around in the back of my dad’s Silverado pickup. No booster seat, ne seat belts sometimes we weren’t even sitting down just street surfing in the back. The funny thing is at 63 I don’t pass all the requirements to ride like an adult. My thighs are to short to bend my knees enough to touch the floor and my stomach is too big for the belt to reach my waist.
Look, I’m pro safety and not usually seen yelling at clouds. I’m somewhere between the olds (sorry) who were piled into the back of wagons and truck beds, and more the age where I was in a carseat till I was two, and a booster till I was 4 or 5 (though there were times as I got older that we would put two kids to a lap belt in certain situations so safety wasn’t always job #1 lol).
My kids are currently in boosters, 4 year old in a high back booster, 7 year old in a regular booster. They’re slightly larger than the average kid. I have no issue with keeping them in seat boosters till they’re… 9? Maybe 10? I was in the front seat by 7, I feel like a booster to 10 and backseat life until a teen is fine. And if it’s so dangerous to have a tween not on a booster in the back, then maybe car manufacturers need to redesign the damn backseat for the people who actually sit in the backseat.
With ya on the potential redesign.
I’m not that short and, proportionally, longer of leg. Still, I can’t sit comfortably or safely (for my back) on most modern livingroom furniture – the seats are too dang deep.
I feel like most living room sofas are more designed to be laid on than to be sitting upright comfortably. I’m 5’10 and my lower back doesn’t quite hit the back cushion properly with my legs over the edge.
I’ll add, The Autopian may have the only comment section where some people admit that they aren’t 6’5 lol. It’s refreshing.
Yeah, for all the stupid nonsense they force upon car manufacturers, WTF isn’t there a requirement for height-adjustable shoulder belts? If they did it properly and with enough adjustment, kids even younger could dispense with the landfill-clogging seats all the sooner, but of course, the seat manufacturers contribute to parasite politicians campaigns to expand the use of their product and the OEMs would rather not spend the money, either, so we get more overpriced trash we’re forced to consume and told we’re assholes who hate children if we protest.
Booster seat, eh? When I was a kid, my sister and I would try to lie on the package shelf of Dad’s boattail Riviera. *yells at cloud, but this is true*
I’ve known petite, adult women who might not have been borderline to meet these requirements in certain cars.
My sister always sat on top of the fold down armrest in the rear of our Mercedes.
I sat in the parcel bin of a 1962 Corvair. Which was vas safer than sitting on a child’s rattan chair wedged between the seats and the gas tank of an MGTD.
There has to be some kind of association that will fight that nonsense. Whenever the government sites “smart” or “safety” it’s rarely either just some way to piss people off, assert control and generate income. With the way the political elites are in that place I wouldn’t doubt it’s targeted at certain people that tend or be shorter while giving lip service saying how wonderful and tolerant they as individuals are. I could see 10 or 12 but 16 is too far. Next they will raise it to 18 then 21 then say short people need some kind of special seat or some other insanity.
Common sense is the wordplay. See that and you have to check thrice.
This – most modern cars now have adjustable top belt anchors, absolutely unheard of 25 years ago.
Not everybody worries about the short people.
Like Randy Newman?
Or, and hear me out here, because this is gonna sound strange: Maybe it’s not about control, or income, or the irritation of short teenagers, maybe it is just about safety?
Calm down it’s only been a little while since they even even thought of changing the regulations on airbags so as to not kill short people outright.
I wonder what the rules are for children in a Vespa sidecar while hauling a camper and a rowboat?
Immediately custody removal and places with a family the state determines has the proper values. Only to be suied for abuse when the child reaches age of majority.
Other than the age, it looks like my mother in law should be in a booster seat. LOL
Isn’t this really a fix of a fix for the poor testing protocols? The ones that use an “average” male dummy to test almost everything? I think things have recently moved a little bit towards more diverse dummies.
When there’s a test you’ll design to meet the test and when the test is for “average” your design famously won’t actually work correctly for anyone.
By 16, one is likely at or near full grown adult height. My daughter was booster seatless by 10? I understand the risks … but social stigma and simple logistics are also a thing. Imagine having to put a booster seat or two in you car just to help transport a middle school sports team to an event.
Things are so much safer than they were during my childhood (’80s) but we likely have passed the point of diminishing returns. We are no longer riding in pickup truck beds as was common in my childhood.
I’ll stop yelling at the cloud now.
My God. Imagine being a small 15 year old with a summer birthday. Your 16 year old friends will start driving and you instantly become either a pariah who never gets invited anywhere because no 16 year old is carrying around a booster for his tiny friend or you end up the butt of every joke because your parents drop you every where (in a booster).
Bingo – chained to a car seat until liscensed?
I’m right there with you. Between seatbelt laws and passenger safety standards things are so much safer than when we were kids. I wonder if there have been any studies done to see whether this is a real issue. It reminds me of them changing the standards for blinds so that you can’t have a cord because someone might get strangled by it. I am unable to find any evidence that it ever happened.
I have corded blinds on my gameroom, they would pull off the wall by the clips before a 15lb child would strangle.
I mean, I suppose an infant could be at risk if the parent wrapped it in the cord, but that seems like the parent is the problem, not the cord. The reason it even bothers me is that I had a high window over my stairs that let in a lot of hot afternoon sun. Other than an expensive electric blind, something with a cord would have worked, but not available.
I thought the cord thing was only to get rid of it being a loop. I remember when blinds moved to individual strings (or a pair that was braided up?) and was told they didn’t have loops anymore due to child choking potential, but I haven’t had blinds in ages, so maybe it’s gotten more strict?
And what if they’re still short at 17? What changes safety-wise that makes them not need the BS seat? They’re still a minor, so unable to be trusted to make their own decisions in the eyes of the law. I’d guess moving the age to 18 would be their next step.
There are some cars where I *still* have the shoulder belt chafing my neck occasionally, and I’m 5’4”. Thankfully most cars these days have the anchor point adjustable for height.
Yeah, it’s interesting to look at some of the cars with tacked-on, rudimentary seatbelts before they did a lot of research about how/where they worked best and actually integrated it into the design. I wonder about that every time I strap into the Mondial: will this thing actually make it worse in a wreck (or flip)? I wonder if there is YouTube footage of crash tests of 40-year old cars…
Same here and i’m 5’6″. The adjuster on my Ford binds up the belt when it’s in the lowest position.
Yeah I have issues with the belts binding in that position, too, though it mostly seems to be binding up after I get out.
5’6″, same problem
Came here with the same complaint. A lot of times it seemed like it was just lazy design.
5’5″ – same issue. And, so, to keep it off my neck, I move it so some other even-more-incorrect location, figuring the belt will instantly move back to my neck in event of an accident but at least I won’t have been so chafed by it while driving.
This is just another anti-car movement. Imagine being 14 or 15 and showing up to the school dance in your fucking booster seat. Kids will never want to get in a car again in their life.
This may be the greatest attempt yet in the grand conspiracy to end all cars.
…sorta /s but I do think the shame will be real. The jokes will be brutal for the shorter kids.