Staff writer

Starting next spring, it will be illegal for drivers to let small children sit on laps or allow them to move around the inside of a vehicle while it is in motion. The youngsters will instead have to be securely fastened into a child safety seat.

With Japan lagging behind the United States, Australia and other countries in child auto safety for more than 10 years, the Diet enacted a bill in April to revise the Road Traffic Control Law, which requires all children under 6 to sit on safety seats and drivers to take responsibility for that.

While the revised law, to take effect by May 10, 2000, at the latest, will bring about big business opportunities for manufacturers and retailers, many see a lot of room for child seats to be made safer and more user-friendly.

According to the latest survey by the Japan Automobile Federation, conducted in May, only 15.1 percent of drivers who carry young children were using child seats.

The products' high prices -- from an average of 40,000 yen to a high of 140,000 yen -- as well as complicated installation procedures and a lack of information about child seats have deterred consumers from using them, experts say.

In fact, "Many parents wrongly believe that holding a baby in a car is safe," said Akiko Takada, chief representative of the Child Seat Liaison Conference, an industry body set up in late May to promote the use of child seats.

"That shows how little awareness Japanese adults have of car safety issues for children," Takada said.

Between 1994 and 1998, the rate of traffic deaths for children secured in child seats stood at 0.05 percent, while the figure surged fourfold, to 0.21 percent, for those who weren't, according to the National Police Agency.

While the use of child seats dramatically reduces the risk of death in an accident, child seats are "meaningless if not used correctly," Takada said.

A child seat must fit well to a car and be held in place firmly with a seat belt. The best place to fix a child seat is at the center of the rear seat, and it must not be placed in a passenger seat equipped with an air bag, she said.

In addition, a large number of child seats have problems with adjustability and some with safety, according to Hisashi Iguchi, a researcher at the Japan Consumer Information Center.

A 15-month-old boy recently was found brain-dead after he was accidentally strangled by a child-seat shoulder belt that had been pulled out too far.

Other complaints the JCIC received include burns from metal buckles that were heated by the sun, children falling out of child seats and problems with buckles and shoulder belts in minor collisions.

"Child-seat manufacturers and carmakers should, at the very least, clearly display which seat fits or doesn't fit which car," Iguchi said.

"It's the responsibility of manufacturers to make installation manuals easier to understand ... because a lot more people will be using child seats with the new law," he said.

Autobacs Seven Co., a major retailer of automobile parts, says that it does its best to make sure its customers choose the right seat for their car.

Displaying nearly 50 different safety seats manufactured by nine companies, Autobacs' Shinonome store in Tokyo's Koto Ward helps customers set up a child seat in their car to see if it fits.

"We also ask our customers to have their children try different seats to find the one best suited to them," said Takayuki Arimura, a spokesman for Autobacs.

To avoid misuse and mismatching, Toyota Motor Corp. and Takata Corp., a major seat-belt maker, have jointly developed a new child seat based on a standard called ISOFIX that was drawn up by the International Standardization Organization.

The new seat, to be introduced in August, has a base that locks easily with hooks set in the rear seat of the car. Connectors attach the seat to the top of the base.

Toyota spokeswoman Hitomi Hayakawa said the new seat is easy to install and can be fixed firmly to the interior of the car without a seat belt.

"The ISOFIX was developed because so many people were not setting up child seats correctly," she said.

However, the ISOFIX child seat can only be used in cars equipped with the special hooks.

Toyota plans to release a few models with ISOFIX hooks at the same time the new seat is put on the market.

Parents in the past have had to buy as many as three different seats to accommodate their child's growth. But Takata has developed a new series of child seats that can be adjusted in size as the child grows, allowing a newborn to use the seat until age 8, said Yoshio Yamakawa, general manager of the company's child seat division.

The Milib series, priced at between 79,800 yen and 89,800 yen, will save parents' money because one set of seats fits children until they are big enough to use a seat belt, Yamakawa said.

Some companies are also providing rental seat services to encourage their use.

Saturn Japan, a division of General Motors Japan Ltd., began offering free use of safety seats for buyers of its Saturn small passenger car last August. It has since loaned more than 350 child seats.

Toyota Tokyo Rental and Leasing Co. lends safety seats to people who rent its cars, and Nissan Car Leasing Co., which rents child seats for 500 yen a day, says it will increase the number of rentals in the near future.

Although violators of the new law will not be fined, one point will be deducted from their driver's license. Under Japan's penalty point system, drivers are deprived of their license when cumulative points reach a certain level in three years.

Taxis and buses will be the only exception to the revised law.