OKLAHOMA CITY - For the third straight year, legislation has been filed to potentially expand Oklahoma’s seat belt laws to require more children to buckle up.
Authored by state Rep. Russ Ford (R-Broken Arrow), House Bill 2791 would amend Oklahoma’s seat belt laws to require all youth age 17 and younger to wear a seat belt when riding in the back seat. Thanks to a legislative oversight from amendments adopted in 2015, current state law only requires seat belts, car seats or booster seats for children age 8 and under.
As drafted, the booster seat option would still be available for youth younger than age 12. Teenage passengers would be required to use a seat belt.
It would also eliminate an existing provision in the state’s seat belt laws that allows youth who are more than 4 feet, 9 inches tall, but younger than age 8 to opt-out of riding in a booster seat. That language was added by lawmakers in 2015 but did not include provisions for older minors.
“This bill is about protecting our young people from death or serious injury when they are riding as passengers in our automobiles,” Ford said. “As a former police officer, the worst news you can ever deliver to a parent is that their child was killed in a car crash because they were not wearing a seat belt.”
According to data published by the Oklahoma Highway Safety Patrol, eight Oklahoma children died in vehicle crashes in 2018 across six counties, while another 76 received incapacitating injuries. Of the eight fatalities, two were not wearing any kind of seat belt or safety restraint, a decrease of more than 30% from 2017. However, investigators could not determine whether two other casualty cases involved a seat belt or, if so, whether it was worn properly at the time of the crash.
This is not the first time the state has attempted to expand its seat belt laws. Similar legislation was introduced during both the 2018 and 2019 legislative sessions and in September, the Oklahoma Senate’s Public Safety Committee hosted an interim study on the topic at the request of Sen. Carrie Hicks (D-Oklahoma City).
The 2020 legislative session begins on Feb. 3. As of Friday, Ford’s bill has not yet been assigned to a committee.