Government watch: Kids and cars

Consumers Union Senior Product Safety Counsel Sally Greenberg reports on the automotive developments in Washington, D.C.:

Consumers Union (CU) recently joined safety advocates, politicians, and families who had lost children to preventable accidents in urging Congress to pass a law to help protect children from injury in and around cars.
This important initiative is gaining traction, but more work is needed. The bill in the Senate has 22 co-sponsors. In the House, the bill has 20 co-sponsors. To see this bill passed, advocates are pressing hard for more co-sponsors and a Senate hearing. Through support from concerned consumers like yourself, urging your government representatives to sponsor bill S. 1948, we can see an important proposal turned into law and thereby make the world safer for the next generation.

"The Cameron Gulbransen Kids and Cars Safety Act" is named for a Long Island toddler who was killed when he ran behind the family SUV as his father, Greg Gulbransen, was backing up in the driveway. Gulbransen, a pediatrician, has since become an activist in the fight to get accident-prevention technologies installed in all cars.

S 1948 has several requirements:
1) A rearward visibility standard in all vehicles so drivers can see what is behind them as they back up. With some vehicles, the rear blind zone size is quite large. For example, Consumer Reports tests have found that a 5' 1" driver backing up in the new Jeep Commander (without a rearview camera) would face a 69-foot blind zone. That's longer than many driveways! Two children a week, Kids and Cars estimates, are killed in backover incidents.

2) An auto-reverse mechanism on power windows to prevent strangling children and injuring arms or fingers. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimated in a 1997 study that 499 people visit emergency rooms each year for treatment of injuries related to power windows. For years safety advocates have been trying to get the government to do something about the dangers posed by power windows. A high 80 percent of European vehicles have auto-reverse power windows, but in the United States, the figure hovers at around 10 percent. An auto-reverse mechanism in all windows will prevent such injuries.

3) Brake-shift interlock in all key positions so children must step on the brake in order to get the car into gear. Sadly, that technology is absent from too many cars with deadly results.

Again, you can help make cars safer for all by encouraging your national representatives and senators to support this bill.

--Sally Greenberg