Children killed every week in America’s driveways
The tragedies unfold with striking similarity: An Idaho father runs over his 22-month-old son while preparing his pickup for a wash, a Washington man kills his fiance’s 3-year-old when he rolls out of the driveway without seeing her tricycle, a Texas teen backs over a 14-month-old boy who had crawled across his path from a neighboring driveway.
Heartbreaking? Yes. But hardly a rarity in the United States where children die every week in driveways and parking lots from San Diego to St. Paul.
“I don’t think people have a clue as to how serious it is,” said Janette Fennell, president and founder of KidsAndCars.org, a national advocacy group focused on preventing childhood injuries and death around vehicles.
But it is a deadly serious problem – so serious that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration plans to release new rules for rear visibility in vehicles.
Unsuspecting motorists run over an estimated 50 children a week in residential driveways or parking lots across the country. At least two of those children die, according to data compiled by KidsAndCars.org.
Tragically, seven out of 10 of those deaths are caused by a direct family member. And all of them are preventable.
New federal rules could change rear-visibility standards
In Washington, Mary Borges heads up a SafeKids coalition that is working to reduce those deaths.
“We lose a couple kids a year to backovers,” said Borges, “usually in the spring.”
That’s what happened this year. Two children died within a week of each other in Washinton’s Puget Sound region – one in Newcastle and the other in University Place.
So Borges is urging parents, and children, to be more aware. Last fall, she staged a demonstration outside a Boys and Girls Club to teach children about the blind spots that lurk around delivery trucks that rumble through their neighborhoods. Her message to grade-schoolers: Stay out of them.
But blind spots aren’t limited to delivery trucks.
Consumer Reports found that sedans, minivans and SUVs have rear blind zones that extend 12 to 14 feet. Pickup trucks are considerably worse, with a 30-foot stretch that can’t be seen in the rear-view mirror.
Soon, those blind zones may shrink. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is crafting rules that could require increased visibility behind vehicles by 2014.
The proposed rules are meant to improve a driver’s ability to detect pedestrians immediately behind his or her vehicle, reducing the chances of running over a child while backing up. The rule is expected to prevent up to 228 deaths a year.
Because back-up cameras could add between $159 and $203 to the cost of a vehicle, NHTSA is considering some cheaper alternatives, including a sensor with a warning noise.
Changes to the nation’s vehicle safety standards come as part of The Cameron Gulbransen Child Auto Safety Act. The measure also requires automakers to design power windows that reverse themselves upon hitting an object and install gear shifts that guard against children accidentally putting a vehicle into motion.
Even though the new rules are expected to make children safer – potentially alerting drivers to tricycles or tots behind their vehicles – Borges isn’t waiting for a federal fix.
“It is a long time out before [those changes] will infiltrate society,” she said. “In the meantime, we have to do something to help educate people.”