Starting January 1st, 2012 all “children must be secured in a appropriate child passenger restraint (safety seat or booster seat) in the back seat of a vehicle until they are at least 8 years old or 4’9″ in height“.
With this new law, it is almost guaranteed that all kids will be strapped to their booster seats.  I purchased convertible car seats for my kids because of their versatility (can be adjusted to Rear or Forward facing) but now I will definitely have to upgrade to a big kid seat when my boys get older. Thankfully, Little Lum already has a Britax Frontier SICT that we got after our car accident in May. We will soon need to upgrade Little Wing’s car seat too. My sympathy to all the parents who thought their child was home free only to find out that will have to buy another car seat now due to the law change. I can think of a few kids who might be very upset about it too.