You can debate whether the policy is proper in the first place, but a decision by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to withhold child car seat funds from North Carolina over a technicality is just stupid:

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration does not like a provision in state law that says children younger than 8 don’t have to be in car seats when their “personal needs are attended to.”

As a result, the state could lose $1 million a year over six years….

The phrase about personal needs has been in the state’s law since 1982, said Darrell Jernigan, director of the Governor’s Highway Safety Program. The state has received federal grant money for child car safety for at least six years based on the law, he said, and the personal needs clause had not caused a problem until now.

So, now how safe are the kids? Duh-uh.