Editorial: Keeping children alive

Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2006 | 7:10 a.m.

Federal highway safety officials are calling for more research on the part of government and automakers to help prevent crashes in which motorists accidentally back over small children.

In a report submitted to Congress on Monday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that so-called backover collisions cause an average of 183 deaths and 6,700 to 7,400 injuries annually.

Although the agency says that a "significant portion" of the injuries were minor, the report is fueling support for legislation in the House and Senate that calls for enacting a minimum rearward visibility standard on all vehicles. The bills, introduced in the Senate by Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and John Sununu, R-N.H., and in the House by Reps. Peter King, R-N.Y., and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., have gained the support of highway and child safety advocates.

Some current technologies allow drivers to view the areas behind their vehicles on small video screens, while other systems make an audible signal when a vehicle is close to an obstacle, such as another vehicle or a person.

But the traffic safety administration's report says that such technologies were developed as "parking aids" that have not been adequately tested as measures to prevent backing over a child. Preliminary testing showed that the abilities of these systems to detect a child were "typically poor," and that the detection ranges "were not sufficient to prevent collisions with pedestrians or other objects."

Words cannot describe the depth of grief that is created by these horrific collisions. While it obviously is best to know exactly where a child is at any given moment, accidents do happen. And there is no harm in doing research to find out whether better technology and design standards can help prevent some of these tragedies.