Was it ever legal in the United States to ride in the open bed of a pickup truck, like we used to as kids?
I remember doing this all the time, growing up. My dad had a 1976 full-size, green Chevrolet pick-up truck. He would take me around in it all the time, including on major roads. Looking back, it feels like something insane to do. But I saw several construction workers going to a job yesterday, riding in the back of a pickup truck, and it brought back memories.
Answers ( 3 )
Well, it wasn't illegal, anyway.
Kids were not thought of as something terribly precious to be swaddled and protected from all harm until the Eighties, really. The idea started slowly, and by the Nineties, "Baby On Board" signs were the norm. Until that shift, children were ... well, just another mouth to feed, cute in their way, but protecting them was their parents' look-out, not the law's. This mindset was a hangover of the pre-BCPill times of having lots of children without any choice, really, and adults still being inculcated by the memory of dead siblings and cousins from childhood diseases pre-medical interventions for them.
My parents were born at the beginning of the Depression; they grew up poor and hard- they sometimes went hungry and they worked- physically- each and every day. Their parents lived with the knowledge children- no less than adults- died easily- didn't mean parents didn't love their own children, but that death was always on the line. Children were protected in the family, perhaps, but strong child labor laws in businesses were not put in place until right around the time my parents were being brought into the world; thus, their own parents understood the need for children to labor to support the family, too. And having a few extra children around could be a blessing if one or more died.
All of this combines to provide a scene in the 1950s and 1960s where children were still plentiful, and had yet to become a Hallmark card of hope and dewy-eyed remembrance of a fictional, idealized childhood. But that was a-coming.
I rode in the back of a pick-up truck. Heck- I rode standing on the front seat! Infants were handed to the eldest sibling to hold, or laid wrapped up on the floorboard- front or back of the vehicle. There were no seatbelts. They were no carseats- in fact, my eldest child, born in the mid1970s, had what was called a "car bed"- a kind of walled cot on legs which was placed on the bench seat of the back and seat belts- finally regulated- were fastened around the legs to hold the bed in place. Not the infant- the bed.
Had nothing to do with being careless, had to do with technology and lack of information; we had not gotten to the point where we understood and accepted a child in a car which was in a crash became a human missile.
Once we got that one through our heads, we invented actual car seats.
But, riding in the back of a pick-up didn't stop being "normal" until the late 1990s or so. Especially in rural areas, where pick-ups are the main mode of transportation, it was the only way to get everyone from here to there: pick-ups were mostly a front-seat-cab only. There were no crew cabs or back seats- pick-ups had a bench seat across the front and good luck to ya 'cause that windshield was about two foot from your face.
So where did you put the kids?
In the bed of the truck.
And sometimes, your Dad would swerve a bit, making the ride swoop and throw you around a little, or, even better, gun it some going over a hilltop so you got that carnival ride sensation as the leaf springs did their job. You could wedge yourself in the corner, or get on your knees and hold onto the side of the bed, wave at cars behind you and watch your hair whip around in the wind of your passing.
Was it safe? Oh. hell no! But our culture was just beginning to believe anything which could possibly harm a child must be mitigated as wrong, evil, probably sinful and there ought abe a damned law!
And so we have passed such laws.
You don't see kids in the bed of a pick-up truck anymore, and you don't see them standing on the front seat making squealing tire noises while Dad drives, and they aren't allowed to climb the trees much anymore, or ride their bike down the sidewalk to the new church parking lot where there's still piles of dirt from the construction that just beg to be treated like a bicycle roller coaster. That isn't allowed- they might get hurt. There are laws now if children get hurt- at the very least, the parent is often held responsible as neglectful if the child gets hurt.
I'm not going to say kids today are missing out- I mean, we didn't have video games, which are highly entertaining- but sometimes I wonder if keeping a child swaddled from all possible harm is the correct way to raise an adult member of our society. 'Cause the adult world contains a great deal that can harm a person, and maybe it would be better if newly hatched adults had a bit of real world experience with that knowledge.
But I am old, and my children all survived riding in the bed of a pick up truck and more.
It still is legal in a number of states. And there weren't many laws in the past. Oregon for instance, but the law is that the interior seats have to be filled. So, the law does restrict riding in the back of a truck in Oregon. In California you can if there's a restraint system - seat belts or some other restraint. In 19 other states, you can legally have someone ride in the back of a truck. So, in short, it's still legal in some states
The following 20 states don’t have any state laws about riding in the bed of a truck. All the other 30 states and the Distric of Columbia have restrictions and limitations, based on age, restraints, occupation, farming, enclosures and passenger load/seating availability. Some states may prohibit riding on an interstate or state highway (see link for 2021 information and restrictions).
Source: Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, June 2021 https://www.iihs.org/topics/seat-belts/cargo-area-restrictions-laws
When I was a tweener in Central Florida, parents would organize "hayrides" in the back of a pickup filled with hay, apparently to give us kids a chance to make out with minimal supervision. We'd ride some 20 miles or so down to "Sand Mountain" (the closest thing to an actual mountain in Florida) where we'd climb the hill, roll down it in the sand and then climb back into the truck for the ride home. I don't believe the question of safety ever came up. Parents assumed their kids were not stupid enough to jump out of a moving truck.