DENVER-
A proposal that would have allowed police officers to pull over drivers for not wearing seat belts died in the House on Thursday.
State representatives first amended the bill to allow traffic stops only if children under nine years old or less than 57 inches tall weren’t in safety seats. But lawmakers rejected that 33-31 partly because of fears drivers could be hassled by unnecessary traffic stops because it would be difficult to tell whether a child was in a booster seat.
“You just can’t know that until you have a child out of the car and that implies a traffic stop,” Rep. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, said.
Under current state law, failure to buckle up is a secondary offense, meaning officers can cite drivers only if they’ve been stopped for some other reason. Colorado could have picked up a $12 million federal grant by joining the 25 other states who have made it a primary offense.
There’s some dispute over whether having children who aren’t in car seats or safety seats is a primary offense in Colorado. Clarifying that it is a primary offense in state law would have brought in $2 million from the federal government, Rep. Joe Rice, D-Littleton, said.
“We need every dime we can get in our state for transportation, not to mention driver safety,” Rice said.
The seat belt bill passed the Senate but met more opposition in the House from both Republicans and Democrats who worried about giving police too much power and intruding on people’s privacy.
Last year a seat belt bill also died in the House partly because of fears it could be misused by authorities to pull over drivers because of their race.
Rice said Colorado has until 2009 to get federal funding by passing a tougher seat law but he said there may be less funding available for states by that time.
