Senate panel considers bill to further restrict seatbelt laws

INDIANAPOLIS -- A top federal highway official is backing a bill to change Indiana's seatbelt law and require drivers of pickups and sport-utility vehicles to buckle up along with other motorists.\nJeffrey Runge, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, planned to testify Tuesday before a state Senate committee considering the legislation. The bill is being sponsored by the panel's chairman, Republican Sen. Thomas Wyss of Fort Wayne.\n"He is addressing a very acute problem right now and one that is probably under the radar screens of a lot of Hoosiers," Runge said in an interview before the hearing.\nIndiana's seatbelt law requires that a driver and any front-seat passengers in a car buckle up. It exempts trucks from the requirement, and the Indiana Court of Appeals ruled in September that any vehicle with a truck license plate is viewed legally as a truck.\nAttorney General Steve Carter has appealed the case to the state Supreme Court.\nMinivans and SUVs make up an estimated 550,000 of the 1.3 million vehicles with truck plates. Some officials believe the vehicles' owners choose to pay $9 more for a truck plate so they can avoid the seat-belt law.\nWyss' bill also would require children ages 4 to 12 to wear seat belts when riding in trucks. Current law only requires truck passengers younger than 4 to be in a child safety seat.\nIt also would limit the number of passengers a vehicle can carry to the number of restraints, which would make riding in the bed of a pickup truck illegal.