Safety Belts & Child Seats

​Child Safety Seat Law

Child passengers must be restrained in child safety seats until they weigh forty pounds or reach the upper weight limit for the car seat in use. Infants must ride rear-facing until they reach two years of age unless the child turned age one prior to May 26, 2017.

Booster Seat Law

Children over forty pounds or who have reached the upper weight limit for their forward-facing car seat must use a child seat with harness or a booster to 4'9" tall or age eight and the adult belt fits correctly.

Rear Seating for Children

There is no Oregon law specifically prohibiting children from riding in the front seat of passenger vehicles. However, a rear-facing infant seat cannot be placed in a front seating position that is equipped with an airbag because this would violate Oregon's requirement for "proper use" of a child safety seat. There is a national "best practice recommendation" calling for rear seating through age twelve.

National "Best Practice" Recommendations

Safety experts from USDOT have published national best practices recommendations which would keep children in each type of child seat longer than Oregon law prescribes, in addition to back seating through age twelve.

Belt or Booster

Belt fit can vary greatly from one vehicle to another and one child to another. If your child meets Oregon's legal requirements for moving from a booster seat to safety belt but you still have doubts about whether your child fits in the belt in your particular vehicle, then the following simple test can help. Place your child in the vehicle without a booster seat and then ask these questions. Until you can answer YES to all of the questions, your child should stay in a booster seat.

1. Can the child sit all the way back against the seat of the vehicle with their knees bent comfortably over the edge of the vehicle’s seat?
2. Do the child’s feet rest flat on the floor?
3. Does the shoulder belt lay flat across the collarbone and across the child’s chest?  The belt should never lay across the child’s neck.
4. Does the lap belt lay low across the child’s the thighs?  The belt should never lay across their stomach.
5. Can the child stay comfortably seated like this for the whole trip?​