ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 24, 1996 TAG: 9610240045
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
For the first time, the government's highway safety agency has found that a child properly using an automobile's front seat belt was killed by the force of an air bag, says a report released Wednesday.
The child's death shows that not only are current air bag warnings inadequate, but new safety warnings proposed by the government also do not go far enough, said parents and safety advocates.
They want everyone told - forcefully - that children should not be in the front seat, period.
Five-year-old Frances Ambrose of Nashville, Tenn., was in the front passenger seat wearing her lap and shoulder belt correctly when she was killed Sept. 12 in a low-speed accident, says the new National Highway Traffic Safety Administration report.
``Had we been notified, we wouldn't have put our child in front of an air bag,'' said Albert Ambrose, Frances' father.
The head of the highway safety agency has warned repeatedly that children up to age 12 should ride in the back seat. But parents said the public is not getting the word.
At least 28 children and 19 adult drivers have been killed by air bags, NHTSA says. But in previous accidents, the agency said the children appeared to be unbelted or improperly belted, or the evidence was inconclusive.
The highway safety agency is under growing pressure to address the problem of air-bag deaths, because there are 15 million vehicles with passenger-side air bags on the road, and that number is growing quickly. Air bags become mandatory on the passenger side of vehicles in model year 1998 for cars and 1999 for light trucks.
The Parents' Coalition for Air Bag Warnings, mostly made up of parents whose children were killed by air bags, met Wednesday with NHTSA's head, Ricardo Martinez, to tell him that proposed air-bag warning labels must be simple and direct.
Robert Sanders, the coalition's leader, said the message should be: ``Do not seat children in the front seat. Air Bags can kill or injure children.''
Last summer, NHTSA proposed warning labels saying that unbelted children and infants in rear-facing child seats may be killed by an air bag.
``Unbelted children can be killed - that's the wrong message,'' said Sanders.
``The labels ought to be very clear that children should never ride in the front seat. That should be blasted all over the world,'' said Joan Claybrook, a former NHTSA administrator who is now president of the advocacy group Public Citizen.
LENGTH: Medium: 56 lines KEYWORDS: FATALITYby CNB