Bush signs auto safety bill into law

David Shepardson / Detroit News Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- President Bush today signed the first new auto safety law passed by Congress since 2005.

The Cameron Gulbransen Kids Transportation Safety Act, which was approved by the House in December, passed unanimously in the Senate on Feb. 14. President Bush signed it without any public event this afternoon.

The new law requires the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to create a database of deaths and injuries of children in non-traffic but auto-related accidents. It also suggests the agency consider toughening regulations to prevent power windows from injuring children, as well as improved public education.

The bill -- dubbed the "Kids and Cars Act" -- also requires NHTSA to study whether to require that power windows and door panels reverse direction when they detect an obstruction, much as automated garage-door openers do. If NHTSA doesn't complete a study within the next two and a half years, it would have to send a report to Congress explaining why.

Requiring windows to automatically reverse when they hit an obstruction likely would cost automakers about $10 per window, according to the legislation, or nearly $700 million annually.

Although it is rare for power windows to kill children, it has happened. In December 2006, a 3-year-old girl was killed in a Pontiac Vibe in Detroit when she was caught in a window that rolled up and strangled her.

A NHTSA regulation already in effect mandates that automakers, by September 2008, install window switches that users must pull up in order to open a window, but it does not require that windows reverse direction automatically when obstructed.

The bill requires NHTSA to begin a regulatory action within a year to expand the "required field of view to enable the driver to detect the presence of a person or object behind the vehicle in order to prevent death and injury resulting from backing incidents, particularly incidents involving small children and disabled persons." The new rules would be phased in over a four-year period.

Some safety advocates want NHTSA to mandate back-up cameras.

The bill, sponsored by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., is named after a 2-year-old New York boy who was accidentally run over and killed in 2002 when his father backed his SUV out of his driveway.

In November, NHTSA estimated back-over accidents result in at least 183 fatalities annually and about 7,000 injuries. It's not clear how many are killed or injured by automatic windows.

In recent years, safety advocates have pressured Congress to force automakers to install safety features, such as glow-in-the-dark emergency trunk releases to help children escape if they get locked inside.

But automakers have also sought to voluntarily adopt safety features -- including side airbags in all vehicles by 2009 -- rather than be subject to government mandates. In 2003, automakers launched a crash compatibility agreement to meet new criteria designed to enhance occupant protection in front- and side-impact crashes.

NHTSA so far has declined to recommend making cameras or sonar mandatory.

The agency has said it is concerned about their effectiveness in poor weather and whether drivers would be able to react quickly enough when using the cameras.

Dave McCurdy, president and CEO of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the trade group that represents Detroit's Big Three automakers, Toyota, Daimler AG and five other automakers, praised the passage.

"This industry is 100 percent behind this legislation and we're committed to using these initiatives to further enhance child safety in and around motor vehicles," McCurdy said.

McCurdy noted that automakers voluntarily agreed last August to add brake-shift interlock systems, which require a driver to engage the brake before shifting a vehicle into gear, reducing the risk of a child accidentally putting a car in motion.

By 2010, automakers will install the devices in all vehicles, up from about 80 percent of 2006 models. The passed by the Senate will make those brake-shift interlock systems mandatory

You can reach David Shepardson at (202) 662 - 8735 or dshepardson@detnews.com.

Measure aims to cut number of accidents

By Ken Thomas
ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON – Congress on
Thursday sent President
Bush legislation to improve
auto safety for children,
including measures
intended to reduce
backovers and accidents
involving power windows.
The bill, which passed the
Senate on a voice vote Thursday,
was approved the House in
December and now goes to Bush
for his signature. A White House
official said the president is
expected to sign the bill.
      The legislation is a
response to incidents of
children being accidentally
backed over by cars with
large blind spots, strangled by
power windows or struck by
vehicles that roll out of the parked
position.
      Building upon a voluntary
agreement reached by automakers,
it required new

Vehicle Back-Over Deaths Concern Safety Advocates
April 29, 2005 - Groups want government to regulate rear blind spots, which contributed to deaths of nearly 100 kids last year.
By Greg Schneider / Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- Nearly 100 children younger than 4 were hit and killed while walking or riding bikes on U.S. roadways last year. Almost the same number died in parking lots and driveways when relatives or family friends accidentally backed over them, but those deaths went uncounted by federal regulators, safety advocates said.

The government agency that ensures traffic safety doesn't track victims of back-over accidents, usually small children run over by family members who don't see them behind minivans and SUVs with limited rear visibility.

The number of such deaths nationwide has averaged at least two a week for a couple of years, according to a children's safety group that compiles numbers from media coverage.

A spike in the incidents this month is unexplained, said Janette Fennell, founder of the advocacy group Kids and Cars. Fennell has registered 14 back-over deaths in the past three weeks, most involving very young children who died from their injuries.

BY JENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER
STAFF WRITER

It may be hard for anyone to fully comprehend the pain of a parent whose child has been run over, especially if the parent or another close relative was the driver.

But Greg and Leslie Gulbransen can. And Matthew and Lisa Cavallaro. And Bill and Adriann Nelson.

All three families were sharing the grief of a Bellport man Monday after hearing that he had run over his 2-year-old son, a reminder of how they had lost their children.

Article continued...

Every year, children are injured and killed because drivers (in some cases, parents) don't see them while backing up. According to Kids and Cars (www.kidsandcars.org), a nonprofit group that wants to improve child safety around cars, backover incidents killed 91 children in 2003. Those deaths represented a 57 percent increase from 2002.

A contributing factor is that larger vehicles (SUVs, pickups, and minivans), which have become increasingly popular, have larger blind spots than passenger cars. A blind spot is the area behind a vehicle that a person can't see from the driver's seat.

Article continued...

Motor-vehicle (MV)--related backovers (i.e., incidents involving children being struck by or rolled over by a vehicle moving in reverse) represent a risk for severe injury and death. To characterize nonfatal MV backover injuries among children, CDC analyzed data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System All Injury Program. This report summarizes the results of that analysis, which determined that, during 2001--2003, an estimated 7,475 children (2,492 per year) aged 1--14 years were treated for nonfatal MV backover injuries in U.S. hospital emergency departments.

Article continued....