Safety seat system has surprise risk
by: Deb Kollars -- Sacramento Bee Staff Writer

Safety experts nationwide are concerned about a possible unexpected and dangerous side effect of a new car seat anchoring system called "LATCH" after learning that a Rancho Murieta child was nearly strangled by a seat belt while riding in her car seat. The new LATCH (Lower Anchors and Tethers for Children) system is required on most child safety seats and cars manufactured after 2002 but is not yet in widespread use.

The LATCH approach uses a set of hooks and straps, called tethers, on the safety seat that are attached to bars and hooks embedded in the vehicle seats.

The system does not use a vehicle's lap-shoulder seat belts, which are left hanging free.

On March 8, 3-year-old Kaitlin Sipes of Rancho Murieta (California) was nearly killed by one of those unoccupied seat belts. The child survived and is fine, but her experience has prompted several pediatric and passenger safety experts to recommend that parents consider locking seat belts behind car seats when using LATCH to deter children from playing with loose belts.

"I'm afraid we didn't expect this," said Stephanie Tombrello, who heads SafetyBeltSafe U.S.A., a national nonprofit in Altadena dedicated to child passenger safety. "LATCH is so new, not many kids have been exposed to it yet. But this obviously is a major problem and needs to be addressed immediately."

She and others stressed, however, that the LATCH system itself is safe and still should be considered a highly secure method of anchoring a car seat.

The Sacramento County incident occurred just 23 days after a boy in Lancaster County, Va., was strangled by a lap-shoulder seat belt in a parked vehicle, said Janette Fennell, president of Kids and Cars, a Kansas organization dedicated to preventing child deaths and injuries in and around cars. The boy, who was about 3, was watching a movie in the back seat and somehow got his neck hooked in the belt, Fennell said.

"It kept ratcheting and ratcheting and he died," she said, adding that the boy's parents were standing nearby but did not realize what was happening.

According to Rochelle Altholz, state administrator for the Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the boy, West Martin, died Feb. 13 of "asphyxia due to neck compression." The death was deemed an accident.

When Fennell heard last week about the near-strangulation of Kaitlin Sipes in Sacramento County, she began alerting safety groups across the country. Several called on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to investigate the potentially hidden danger.

Liz Neblett, a spokeswoman for the NHTSA in Washington, said Thursday that her staff would review the issue. "The LATCH system has been an effective tool for a very short time," Neblett said. "This is the first we've heard of this."

The two incidents should serve as a reminder to parents to never leave a child unattended in a car, according to Dr. Denise Dowd, a Kansas City, Mo., pediatrician who serves on the American Academy of Pediatrics Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention Committee.

While driving, she and others said, adults should check on children often to make sure they haven't gotten themselves into a dangerous bind.

The local incident occurred nearly two weeks ago when Kaitlin Sipes and her 5-year-old sister, Brianna, were riding in their car seats in the back of the family's 2004 GMC Yukon, a large sport-utility vehicle.

Their mother, Lanette Sipes, was driving them home from Sacramento to Rancho Murieta. It was about 7 p.m. and dark on Jackson Highway.

Suddenly, Kaitlin began screaming hysterically. Sipes looked back.

To her horror, she saw that the right rear lap-shoulder belt was wrapped around her daughter's neck. The more the child struggled, the more the seat belt ratcheted and tightened.

Sipes pulled over and ran to her child. As she tried to undo the harness of the car seat, the seat belt tightened more.

"It just kept ratcheting," she said. "Then I looked and saw it wasn't wrapped once; it was wrapped twice around her neck. It was so tight she was turning blue."

Sipes, whose arm was in a cast from a wrist injury, finally was able to slip her daughter's head out of the noose by undoing Kaitlin's ponytail, which had created an inch of extra space behind her head.

Later, the mother said, she was grateful that her husband, Scott, had fixed Kaitlin's hair that morning; the ponytail had been a thick messy knot but probably saved her life.

Kaitlin was left with a bruise and several cuts on her neck but otherwise was OK.

Her parents were stunned.

Sipes is a pediatric nurse and her husband a former California Highway Patrol officer who taught car-seat safety to the public. Safety was high on their minds when they bought their

GMC last March and Graco car seats compatible with the LATCH system. They took comfort in how tightly the seats were secured, compared with the old system that relied on seat belts.

Safety experts contacted by The Bee were equally stunned.

The LATCH system is a promising new safety development in the world of car seats. But the hanging seat belts represent an unintended consequence that people didn't consider, said Roxanne Woods, a registered nurse and coordinator of the UC Davis Medical Center's Injury Prevention Center.

"This might be the tip of the iceberg," she said.

Seat belts can be a confusing issue when it comes to LATCH.

Manuals from both vehicle and car seat manufacturers stress that people may use either seat belts or the lower LATCH anchoring system with confidence but should never use the two at once, said CHP Officer Steve White, who instructs officers and others about proper car seat use. People have been warned never to thread vehicle seat belts through LATCH-anchored seats because manufacturers do not conduct safety tests that way, so it is unknown what the effect might be in an accident.

Generally, product manuals are silent on what to do with unused seat belts.

That was the Sipes' experience. Neither their GMC manual nor the one for their Graco car seats say anything about how to manage unused seat belts. The Bee asked representatives of both companies about the issue last week, but they provided no follow-up answers.

Neblett said that at this point, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration could only recommend that parents read their car seat and vehicle manuals carefully when using LATCH and call the manufacturers if they have questions.

Woods, Tombrello and other safety experts, however, said people should try to lock the seat belts behind - not through - LATCH-attached car seats and take up the slack by ratcheting the belts back into the slots in car models with this feature.

Even then, keep an eye on your child, said Ces Murphy, the West Coast field organizer in Sacramento for the National SAFE KIDS Campaign.

Young children are inquisitive, highly tactile and possess a surprising amount of strength, she said, and can get into trouble in the space of just a moment.

For further information: * UC Davis Medical Center's Injury Prevention Center line is (916) 734-9799.

* Every California Highway Patrol area office has certified technicians in child passenger safety who do car seat inspections and help the public. In the Sacramento area, call the north area office at (916) 338-6710 and the south area office at (916) 681-2300. The CHP's Web site lists area offices throughout the state: www.chp.ca.gov

* The U.S. Department of Transportation encourages people to report incidents of concern on its hot line: (888) 327-4236.

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