Kyle David Miller Question

StillThankful

New member
As a first time booster mom, I'm still researching booster safety, etc. Because DD1 still sleeps so much, I've decided to put her back in the EFTA for now.

I remembered a story about a young boy being ejected from the car while in a booster.

I came across Kyle David Miller. I remember seeing the coverage on TV years ago.

I now realize that he did not submarine out of his booster due to inadequate size or improper seatbelt placement, but rather the seatbelt latch disengaged and ejected him AND the booster out the window as the minivan flipped.

His mother and father now advocate for children to be in harnessed seats as long as possible.

My questions (believe me this is coming from my heart) are : Even if Kyle had been in a 5 point harness seat secured by a seatbelt, wouldn't have the seatbelt still become disengaged & ejected him AND the convertible seat due to the seatbelt defect? Or are they advocating using 5 point harnessed seats w/ LATCH? Or are they saying if he had been in a 5 point harnessed seat WITH the top tether, that he wouldn't have been ejected even if the seatbelt latch disengaged b/c it would have been secured by the tether?

To me, it wasn't so much a booster failure as it was an automobile's seatbelt defect.

I'm just confused.:confused: Please excuse my questions if it sounds silly. I woke up at 4 am because DD2 has been coughing incessantly and then I've been crying for about an hour due to Kyle's untimely death and watching the videos pertaining to his story.
 
ADS

StillThankful

New member
Nevermind guys. I see their message : Seat belts do NOT always work, especially in rollovers, so please keep your children in a 5-point harness secured and tethered to the car for as LONG as possible. and here: Millers learn they could purchase a car seat with a five-point harness capable of supporting up to 80 pounds and install it using the LATCH system, instead of seatbelts.

Therefore, their point is if Kyle had been in a 5 point harness seat tethered using LATCH, that even if the seatbelt became disengaged during the rollover, he wouldn't have been ejected. I get it. However, some vehicles don't allow you to LATCH past a certain weight right?

My vehicle doesn't have latch, and I just couldn't get what they were trying to say. It's now almost 7am and I'm going back to sleep.:p
 

Pixels

New member
Installed with lower anchors or seatbelt, KDM's point is to use the tether as an additional attachment point so that even if the lower anchor strap or seat belt failed, the tether would keep the child restraint in the vehicle and prevent the ejection.

I've never seen any independent conclusion that the seat belt actually failed. True seat belt failure is SO extremely rare that it's unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely. It is far more likely that 3yo Kyle, too immature to be in charge of his own safety in a booster, unbuckled his own seat belt.
 

StillThankful

New member
Installed with lower anchors or seatbelt, KDM's point is to use the tether as an additional attachment point so that even if the lower anchor strap or seat belt failed, the tether would keep the child restraint in the vehicle and prevent the ejection.

I've never seen any independent conclusion that the seat belt actually failed. True seat belt failure is SO extremely rare that it's unlikely. Not impossible, but unlikely. It is far more likely that 3yo Kyle, too immature to be in charge of his own safety in a booster, unbuckled his own seat belt.

In this case, Kyle's mother stated that independent experts later examined the seatbelt and proved that it was faulty: My son was killed in a car accident last year because a senile, 78 year old woman ran a red light and hit us causing us to flip into a ditch. Kyle's seatbelt came unlatched during the roll and he was ejected. His seatbelt was later examined by several experts who determined it was faulty and told me that seatbelts regularly fail, especially in roll over accidents. I had no idea that seatbelts could fail and think that this is something everyone should be made aware of. The government also needs to be more strict about making sure the people they issue licenses to are fit to drive...
http://rememberingfergy.piczo.com/atributetokyledavidmiller?cr=5&linkvar=000044
 

NannyMom

Well-known member
I'd like to know who these "experts" are that say seatbelts regularly fail. As far as I know, I don't think there's anyway to know that for sure in real life crashes. There was a generation of Chrysler seatbelts that could fail. But as far as i know, that's it. And how can they test the belt after the crash and know it failed before/during the crash? I'm sure it sustained some forces durung the roll over.

I know a local family (I met the mom, personally) that had their 3 year old in a highback booster. They hit the brakes hard, and the 3yr fell out of his booster and hit his face on something. He was 3. He had unbuckled his seatbelt, and Mom didn't realize (the next day she bought a Nautilus)
 

StillThankful

New member
From the material I read, the experts were never identified.

Further, do you or anyone know what kind of minivan they drove? I'm just curious.
 

Judi

CPST/Firefighter
If the seat belt does fail, I would rather a 5 pt harness than a booster. But yeah, he probably unbuckled.
 

LISmama810

Admin - CPS Technician
If you search the forum for "Kyle David Miller," you'll find probably hundreds of threads on this topic.

The family's message is probably single-handedly responsible for people wanting to keep their kids in harnesses longer, which is a good thing if the kid is 3. If the kid is 9, it leads to paranoia.

At the time, I imagine the family didn't realize that LATCH has limits. There also weren't as many HWH seats as there are today.

They have (had?) a foundation to give HWH seats to children who should still be harnessed but whose parents can't afford them. It was a great program but even so, those seats often needed to be installed with the seatbelt.

Over time the message seemed to shift from "OMG! Seatbelts are unsafe!" to "Make sure your child is appropriately restrained."
 

StillThankful

New member
If you search the forum for "Kyle David Miller," you'll find probably hundreds of threads on this topic.

The family's message is probably single-handedly responsible for people wanting to keep their kids in harnesses longer, which is a good thing if the kid is 3. If the kid is 9, it leads to paranoia.

At the time, I imagine the family didn't realize that LATCH has limits. There also weren't as many HWH seats as there are today.

They have (had?) a foundation to give HWH seats to children who should still be harnessed but whose parents can't afford them. It was a great program but even so, those seats often needed to be installed with the seatbelt.

Over time the message seemed to shift from "OMG! Seatbelts are unsafe!" to "Make sure your child is appropriately restrained."

100% agree. I'm glad that the message has shifted to the latter.

Initially, the message seemed to me was to "harness forever because boosters were unsafe." But when I looked at the logistics--that the seatbelt failed & not the booster nor seatbelt placement on Kyle was in question, I was having a problem linking the message/platform to what really happened. If that makes sense.

I kept saying to myself--if the seatbelt failed, how would a 5 point harness help? Then I kept reading--and saw that they are advocating using LATCH. But then the thought that there is a weight limit on LATCH 40-48 # unless you have vehicle made after 9/1/05 came to mind. Then I said to myself, they are so many cars out here without LATCH--like my own that we would still have to install the seat w/ the seatbelt. I also saw that they advocate use of the top tether, which if the seatbelt fails, the carseat would become disengaged but stay in the car via tether anchor.

IDK.
 

Pixels

New member
I kept saying to myself--if the seatbelt failed, how would a 5 point harness help? Then I kept reading--and saw that they are advocating using LATCH. But then the thought that there is a weight limit on LATCH 40-48 # unless you have vehicle made after 9/1/05 came to mind. Then I said to myself, they are so many cars out here without LATCH--like my own that we would still have to install the seat w/ the seatbelt. I also saw that they advocate use of the top tether, which if the seatbelt fails, the carseat would become disengaged but stay in the car via tether anchor.

IDK.

LATCH weight limits exist regardless of when the vehicle was made.
 

StillThankful

New member
LATCH weight limits exist regardless of when the vehicle was made.

Oops...I meant for the Sunshine Kids seats w/ the specialized LATCH attachment--(Sunshine Kids does allow consumers to use the specialized LATCH attachments up to the full weight capacity of the Radian carseat - up to 65 lbs for Radian65 SL and up to 80 lbs for Radian80 SL & Radian XTSL - if the vehicle was manufactured after Sept. 1, 2005. from http://www.car-safety.org/latch.html .
 

LISmama810

Admin - CPS Technician
StillThankful said:
Oops...I meant for the Sunshine Kids seats w/ the specialized LATCH attachment--(Sunshine Kids does allow consumers to use the specialized LATCH attachments up to the full weight capacity of the Radian carseat - up to 65 lbs for Radian65 SL and up to 80 lbs for Radian80 SL & Radian XTSL - if the vehicle was manufactured after Sept. 1, 2005. from http://www.car-safety.org/latch.html .

Even then, there are still limits. It's just that Sunshine Kids says you can ignore them. You need to decide which source is more credible.
 

ntrenary

Active member
I think Kyles family also thought, if he was in a 5pt and ejected he would've had the protection of the seats shell and that might have saved his life.
Such a sad story.
 

skylinphoto

New member
ntrenary said:
I think Kyles family also thought, if he was in a 5pt and ejected he would've had the protection of the seats shell and that might have saved his life.
Such a sad story.

That's always what I thought they meant.

Sent from my T-Mobile G2 using Car-Seat.Org
 

Brigala

CPST Instructor
By the way, in the roll-over accident i was in, my friend's seat belt failed (she was the driver). But it still did its job before it failed. When we came to a stop upside-down at the bottom of the ravine, she was completely unbuckled. She couldn't remember whether she had buckled her seat belt or not, but I knew she had because I had reminded her to do so just as we left (she wasn't in the habit and frequently forgot). It caused a lot of confusion with the insurance company because she initially told them she was not buckled, but when they asked me, I insisted she was. The next day when the seat belt bruise started showing up across her shoulder and chest, we had a definitive answer.

Even if a seat belt fails, it's likely to slow down the car seat or passenger as it ejects. And if my child is going to be loose in a car, I'd rather have my child securely fastened into a 5-point harness than just loose. At that point, the car seat is going to function more or less like a full-body crash helmet, rather than a restraint. Certainly not as effective as being held securely in place agains the vehicle seat, but better than nothing in most cases, I think.

In my accident, the back seat bench had been replaced by the dealership or a previous owner and not properly bolted down. So my son's infant seat (baseless, seat belt over the child's lap) was also more or less loose in the car by the time we came to a stop, because the bench we were both sitting on had come off in the crash and was up against the backs of the front seats. My son was uninjured. I broke my spine in two places, probably as a direct result of that seat coming loose. LATCH or seat belt wouldn't have made a hoot of difference in that situation.

In KDM's case, I think there's a pretty good chance that the child had not properly secured the latchplate into the buckle. I see this all the time with young kids in boosters; their parents let them buckle themselves in and they usually cannot do it correctly. If the latchplate were only partway into the buckle, one can surmise that it might have damaged the buckle as it ripped out upon impact, causing someone looking at it later to declare "seat belt failure." On the other hand, it's also possible that the seat belt actually did fail. I don't think it's "common" but I know first hand that it happens (whether my friend's buckle was securely attached in the first place or not in our accident we'll never know, but it seems a little unlikely that an adult wouldn't have noticed the seat belt not being secure, and the belt took enough force to bruise her before coming loose, so my guess is that it was a true seat belt failure). It's also possible that LATCH can fail. We can't go around making our choices based on the reality that occasionally our safety devices fail. We just have to do the best we can with what we have.
 

Irishmama

New member
Playing devil's advocate, if the seatbelt that the harnessed seat was installed with failed but the top tether stayed attached, that's one heck of a projectile, and may save one child while killing someone else in the car. It's just not possible to plan for and avoid every scenario. :shrug-shoulders:

As much as we wish we could plan for and avoid every bad scenario, it's just not possible and we'd drive ourselves crazy. :twocents:
 

ntrenary

Active member
Playing devil's advocate, if the seatbelt that the harnessed seat was installed with failed but the top tether stayed attached, that's one heck of a projectile, and may save one child while killing someone else in the car. It's just not possible to plan for and avoid every scenario. :shrug-shoulders:

As much as we wish we could plan for and avoid every bad scenario, it's just not possible and we'd drive ourselves crazy. :twocents:

This is exactly what I was thinking.
 

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