Philip Haseltine, president of the American Coalition for Traffic Safety, will schedule and moderate the meetings. The issues confronting this panel are not easy to resolve. Most of these children reportedly used seat belts all the time. Because of their size, children do not fit properly into adult belts until they are approximately eight years old and between 60 and 80 pounds. The Blue Ribbon Passenger Safety Panel will also explore problems of gaps in child passenger safety laws that often leave the children in the ages 4 to 16 unprotected.
Many states fail to address the issue of children as passengers in the cargo area of pickup trucks.