LIHU‘E — No one other than Michael Pagelsdorf Jr. can explain why he decided to drive with his 14-month-old daughter in his lap on Sunday. Wedged between her father’s weight and a deploying airbag, Kaylie Pagelsdorf didn’t stand a chance.
LIHU‘E — No one other than Michael Pagelsdorf Jr. can explain why he decided to drive with his 14-month-old daughter in his lap on Sunday.
Wedged between her father’s weight and a deploying airbag, Kaylie Pagelsdorf didn’t stand a chance.
“These are all things you don’t do,” said Chuck Hirata, a child passenger safety instructor for the Maui Police Department and the Keiki Injury Prevention Coalition.
“I guess a lot of people don’t think it’s going to happen to them.”
Kaylie, he said, should have been placed in a rear-facing child safety seat.
While the investigation into the three-car-crash on Kumuali‘i Highway is far from over, police confirmed Tuesday that an airbag played a part in Kaylie’s death.
“It crushed the little girl,” said Kaua‘i Police Lt. Mark Scribner.
Scribner noted investigators believe Pagelsdorf was driving the Nissan Pathfinder under 25 mph when it crashed into a PT Cruiser stopped in traffic ahead of it.
“We won’t know exact specifics until we do our full investigation,” the Traffic Safety Unit commander said. “If she was in a child seat, she would not have been harmed.”
The Pathfinder was only moderately damaged in the crash.
Police arrested Pagelsdorf Sunday on manslaughter. The extent of his daughter’s injuries will likely be determined this week by a forensic pathologist.
A child under the age of 12 should never be placed in front of an airbag, Scribner explained, because they deploy at high rates of speed. Children’s bones aren’t fully developed at that age and can’t stand the force.
Although statistics weren’t available at press time, Hirata said the crash likely represents the state’s first airbag-related child fatality.
“Unfortunately for this guy, he’s going to have the notoriety of having the first child killed by an airbag,” Hirata said.
“That’s the kind of thing I’ve been working all these years to try to prevent.”
A retired captain for the Maui Police Department, Hirata led its traffic section for years. In the mid-1990s, he began offering child safety seat checks on that island.
Scribner said the last child passenger death he could recall occurred in 1999, when the child’s safety seat was tossed from a vehicle. The seat had not been properly secured in the vehicle.
Child safety
According to “Birth to Boosters: A caregiver’s guide to child passenger restraints,” Hawai‘i’s Child Passenger Restraint Law requires children under 4 years old to ride in a child safety seat. Those 4 to 7 years old must ride in a child passenger restraint or booster seat. Infants should be placed in rear-facing child safety seats.
Scribner added that no child safety device should be placed in front of an airbag.
To help the public learn these lessons, Kaua‘i police have held numerous outreach events to ensure parents and caretakers have properly installed child safety seats. Two such events are planned in March.
Police handed out 134 citations in 2010 for failure to use child safety restraints. They also gave 1,436 seatbelt violations that year.
“We just wanted to cut down on the amount of fatal accidents,” Scribner said.
Following Sunday’s fatal — and preventable — accident, Scribner said police may up child safety seat enforcement. He said he is dedicated to getting the word out about child safety and hopes parents will learn something from the Pagelsdorf tragedy.
Children are vulnerable, he said. “We as parents should be (cognizant) of their safety.”
Hirata, who has worked to promote child safety seat usage for more than 15 years, said he’s heard lots of excuses as to why parents haven’t properly restrained their children: they aren’t going fast, it’s a short distance, car seats are hard to use.
“The big problem is people don’t realize what crash forces are involved,” Hirata said.
Copies of “Birth to Boosters: A caregiver’s guide to child passenger restraints,” are available in The Garden Island’s office at 3-3137 Kuhio Highway in Lihu‘e.
• Jessica Musicar, staff writer, can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) or by e-mailing jmusicar@kauaipubco.com.
