[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 148 (Friday, November 15, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S11205-S11206]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ANTON'S LAW, H.R. 5504

  Mr. FITZGERALD. Mr. President, I rise today to applaud the passage of 
Anton's Law, H.R. 5504, by the House of Representatives.
  I introduced the Senate version of Anton's Law, S. 980, in May 2001. 
S. 980 is named in memory of Anton Skeen, a four-year-old who was 
killed in a car crash in Washington State. Anton's mother Autumn--a 
national passenger safety advocate--believes that Anton's life could 
have been saved had he been riding in a booster seat. Designed 
specifically to help standard adult seat belts fit better, booster 
seats are used to protect children who have outgrown their car seats 
but are still too small to fit properly in an adult-sized safety belt. 
On average, children in this group range from 4 to 8 years of age, 
weigh 40 to 80 pounds, and are less than 4 feet 9 inches tall. It has 
been reported that only about 5 to 6 percent of these 19.5 million U.S. 
children are using booster seats. In 2000, 721 children aged five to 
nine were killed and 103,000 were injured in car accidents.
  The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation approved 
Anton's Law in August 2001, and the Senate passed the measure by 
unanimous consent on February 25 of this year. Last month, in order to 
help ensure that this important measure is placed on the President's 
desk for signature before the end of the year, the Senate Commerce 
Committee accepted my amendment to insert Anton's Law in the Senate 
version of the National Transportation Safety Board Reauthorization 
bill, S. 2950, which the Committee then approved by unanimous consent. 
I would like to thank all of my colleagues for their continued support 
of this bipartisan legislation that will help to improve the safety and 
effectiveness of child restraints in automobiles and protect our 
Nation's young people.
  Like the bill that I introduced in this body, the bill that was 
passed yesterday by the House of Representatives will improve the 
safety of children from 4 to 16 years old by requiring the Secretary of 
Transportation to initiate a rulemaking regarding establishing 
performance standards for child restraints, especially for booster 
seats, for children weighing more than 50 pounds. This measure will 
also lead to the development of a 10-year-old dummy that can be used to 
test child restraint devices. It also requires automobile manufacturers 
to install three-point lap and shoulder belts in all rear seating 
positions of passenger vehicles.
  Since February, I have been working to have this measure passed by 
the House, and I commend them for the work that they have done on this 
important issue. While I am happy that Anton's Law will finally be 
presented to the President, this bill represents only part of what the 
Senate sought to accomplish when we passed Anton's Law in February. The 
Senate's version of Anton's Law, unlike the House bill, contained 
provisions that would extend for 2 years a Federal grant program for 
States to promote child passenger safety and education, and that would 
encourage State action by providing States with financial incentives to 
adopt mandatory booster seat laws by 2004. Absent this incentive grant 
program, States will have little impetus to promulgate the laws needed 
to adequately protect this group of children. As I have already 
mentioned, the version of Anton's Law passed by the Senate this year 
has been incorporated in the Senate's version of the National 
Transportation Safety Board Reauthorization bill. I urge the conferees

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from both the House and the Senate to retain these grant provisions in 
the conference report of this bill.
  I thank Congressman Shimkus and Chairman Tauzin for their work in 
securing passage of Anton's Law by the House of Representatives, and 
urge President Bush to sign this necessary child safety bill into law 
as soon as possible.

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