We have about 9,500 seats in this program. There is a waiting list of over 2,000 children, however. The American Academy of Pediatrics has in the last several years adopted child passenger safety as a priority educational issue, as well as promoting State by State legislation. Indeed, the American Academy of Pediatrics and its members have often been the leading lobbying wedge in most States that now have enacted laws. The Academy has a number of other programs: the "First Ride a Safe Ride" Program, is to assure a safe ride home from the hospital; the "Make Every Ride a Safe Ride" Program, is addressing methods to decrease the misuse of child restraints, and also has as goals: to enhance teenage seatbelt usage, to enhance enforcement initiatives, and to support the strong possibility of future mandatory seatbelt laws for older children and adults of all ages that ride as passengers. Lastly, this is the map of those States that do now have laws protecting young children. Pennsylvania did, indeed. We hope that Texas and Louisiana will fall this year. We hope so, and in turn, perhaps the other States. But we think that progress is remarkable, and once these States, many of whom have just begun to implement their laws, once they have had an experience perhaps similar or better than the Tennessee experience, we will see, I hope, a remarkable similar reduction in the deaths and injuries to these young children. One last note I would like to mention, and it has been mentioned by Mr. Wolfe: the cost of hospitalizing children injured in motor vehicle accidents we must understand, is immense, and the cost of rehabilitating children that are damaged, brain damaged or paralyzed or what have you, spinal cord injuries, is staggering, and for those medicaid and low income children, these costs, as all of us know, must be borne by society with often pure State dollars. So we submit that this whole approach toward child passenger safety is both humanitarian, but also represents a frontal attack on these immense, these enormous health costs that are related to motor vehicle accidents. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. ANDERSON. Thank you, Dr. Sanders. Mr. GORE. Mr. Chairman, I neglected to mention that Dr. Sanders also appears here today as the official spokesman of the American Academy of Pediatrics. I want to now recognize Lieutenant Dan Raper, who has had charge of implementing the ground-breaking Tennessee law, and has really made it work from the beginning. Lieutenant Dan Raper. Mr. ANDERSON. Lieutenant Raper, we are very happy to have you here. Your statement, too, will be made a matter of the record in its entirety as you present it here. Lieutenant. RAPER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, committee members, Mr. Gore. It is a pleasure to speak on the role of law enforcement from the Tennessee point of view with regards to mandatory child restraint. Traffic law enforcement as a function has been defined as the total police effort directed toward obtaining compliance to traffic regulation. The basic purpose and primary objective of traffic law enforcement is the creation and the deterrent to violators and potential violators of traffic laws and regulations. This includes child restraint violators. The ultimate aim of the traffic law enforcement is a voluntary compliance with traffic laws and regulations. Enforcement activities should be considered an educational process, as well. We are educating the motorists into voluntary compli ance. In certain areas of law enforcement, we are more concerned with educating the motorists rather than punishing him or her for violating traffic laws. Since the Tennessee General Assembly enacted the first child passenger restraint law in 1977, the enforcement of the law by the Tennessee Highway Patrol has taken primarily the education approach. Troopers make personal contact with all of the general sessions court judges in the State of Tennessee to explain the necessi ty for the law and the necessity for enforcing it. Being the first State, it was quite controversial. A request was made to encourage the judges to dismiss the fines on the first of fense provided the violators learned the valuable lesson we hoped to employ, and that was to get a child restraint and ride those children safely in the vehicle. The child passenger restraint law became effective January 1st, 1978. During the first 6 months of 1978, a grace period was declared where only verbal warnings or written warnings were issued to those violators. Many times I get asked the question, how do we enforce such a law. People have the concept that we hide behind bushes and jump out and get the mothers that are violating the child restraint law. In Tennessee we enforce the law just as we would any other traffic law, through our normal course of routine patrol, through the visual detection of violation by moving or stationary patrol, or while a violator has been stopped for some other traffic violation and the CRD violation was noted. We sometimes see visual detections while assisting stranded motorists, during roadblocks or driver's license checks or other registration law checks, and even after the fact, maybe an accident investigation. In 1979, the highway patrol began two new programs to assist the child restraint violator in an attempt to increase compliance toward the law. The highway patrol purchased 750 child restraining devices with the funds provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, commonly called "402 funds. When the violator was issued a citation, the trooper offered to loan them a CRD until the court date. The second program was called the donor loaner program. We contacted private citizen groups and asked them to donate either funds or child restraining devices so that we could loan these devices indefinitely to those members of our State who could not afford to purchase one. We divided the devices up in each of our eight patrol districts. Again in 1982, through more funds from NHTSA, we purchased another 750 child restraining devices to place into the loaner program. To date, we have 1,500 child restraining devices that are in he loaner program, and we have had 1,700 devices donated by priate citizens and concerned civic groups. Our approach seems to be working. After 4 years, our approach as changed very little. We still issue citations to violators. We still ive them educational pamphlets. We request that the first offendrs be given a break if they comply with the law in the future. We ill utilize the donor loaner program, but we do not any longer arry the loaner in our vehicles because of the size of the vehicles ave been down sized. We do pass on information where the people an get these seats. Our educational approach appears to be working. When the law as first passed in 1978, at first there were only 50 citations writen from July to September. During the first full year of the law on hild restraint, only 414 were written. As of December 1983, during he 1983 year, the tickets have increased to 5,041. This is an inrease of 260 percent since 1980. In terms of deaths on our highways of children under 4, we were ortunate in experiencing a steady decline year after year until 983. The tragic thing is that of the 79 children killed since 1978, only two children were actually in a restraining device at the time of their death. One crash has been described as unsurvivable. The other crash in which a child was in, the CRD was not properly used. That leaves us with 77 children that possibly could have been saved had they been riding in a child restraining device. More importantly, we see the law does work. From an injury category of zero to five injuries in 1977, we are ranked at 3,200 injuries. By the end of 1982, the injuries in the same age category were down to 877. Although we did experience total decrease in fatalities and injuries during those same years, the miles driven were up and so were the number of actual accidents. So these two groups of statistics reflect that while our citations have increased by 260 percent, at the same time the fatalities have decreased. In addition, public health surveys by the Tennessee Department of Public Health show us that compliance is on the way up. We feel that part of that reason for compliance going up is the educational process and the enforcement arm of the Tennessee Highway Patrol. Apparently Tennessee is doing something right. We feel like we need to do more. We realize that law enforcement is not the only reason compliance is up and fatalities are down. It has taken a combined effort of many agencies to obtain the success that Tennessee has obtained, agencies such as the Tennessee Department of Public Health and their loaner program. Although we have reduced fatalities and increased compliance, we have not stopped, and we are not finished. We still approach the problem with the same zeal as we began, and we will continue until we are able to say we fought a good fight and we have run the course well and we have kept the faith. Thus, we have reached our goal in eradicating the needless death of child passengers. Thank you. Mr. GORE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That concludes our presentation. I would ask the committee's permission if you would consider including in your record an article by Dr. Sanders appearing in the Ross Roundtable publication, which is appended to his statement, and also the text of this Te Mr. ANDERSON. No objection. It will be made a matter of t [The items referred to as follow:] ROSS ROUNDTABLE In collaboration with the Ambulatory Pediatric Association. Ross Laboratories Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 81-52702 Ross Laboratories is privileged to be associated with the production and provision of this information Ross Laboratories Columbus, Ohio 43216 Division of Abbott Laboratories. USA ROSS |