Janette Fennell: Safety at under 5-miles-per-hour

“It if can’t be done, don’t interrupt the person who is doing it.”

Janette Fennell says that quote has become her motto. And in safety circles, Fennell has certainly become better known than the person who uttered those words -- he, or she, is known as “anonymous.” Fennell, the founder and president of Kids and Cars, is determined to “make a difference.”  So, she says, don’t interrupt her when she’s trying to figure out how to do something that many say can’t be done.

Kids and Cars is a nonprofit safety group whose mission is to make sure no child is killed or injured in non-traffic motor vehicle accidents. Such incidents include children being backed over by adults—often by their own parents in a driveway; children left in cars in hot weather; children inadvertently setting cars in motion and children caught—and sometimes strangled—when the power window switch is unwittingly turned on. According to data collected by Kids and Cars, at least 598 children were involved in such incidents last year, resulting in 219 fatalities. Already this year, there have been 468 incidents and 133 fatalities.

This summer there have been some harrowing examples. In Kyle, Texas a, mother accidentally backed over her 18-month-old son when he wandered behind her pickup. On Long Island, New York, this week, a mother ran over her five-year-old when she didn't realize he was in front of her minivan as she pulled into the driveway. And earlier this summer in Concord, California, an 11-month-old was found dead buckled into his car seat in an oven-hot minivan after his father forgot he was in the back seat and went to work.

For more than a decade, Fennell has worked tirelessly for new government rules to reduce such incidents. It was largely through her efforts that the government, in 2000, mandated release latches in car trunks. More recently, her safety campaign helped prompt the government to issue new rules requiring safer power switches on windows although Fennell wants even tougher rules that would require windows to auto-reverse when the window glass hits an obstacle.

Fennell believes that little has changed since Ralph Nader  emerged as a national consumer advocate with his book “Unsafe at Any Speed” in 1965. At the time Nader accused the car makers of resisting safety features such as seat belts.  “We have the same problems today,” says Fennell, although now, there are so many non-traffic incidents that she suggests the book be retitled “Unsafe at No Speed.” Backovers are “one of the top reasons for child fatalities in this country,” causing about about 2,400 hospital emergency room visits and 100 fatalities a year, she said.  "There is a huge hole missing in education and understanding of dangers of vehicles at zero to five miles-per-hour," she says. 

Fennell is now pressing Congress to pass legislation that would require the government to issue a standard for vehicles that would require car makers to improve the field of view when backing up.  The legislation, spearheaded by Fennell, is called the Cameron Gulbransen Kids and Cars Safety Act and has companion bills in both the Senate and the House.  Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, supports this bi-partisan legislation and has collected more than 32,000 signatures petitioning Congress for its passage.

Calling herself a survivor advocate, Fennell explains that she became a car-safety missionary after a bone-chilling event. In October 1995, she and her husband and their then-infant child, Alex, were returning to their California home around midnight when two men kidnapped them, forcing the adults at gunpoint into the trunk of their own car. They were driven to a remote area, robbed and abandoned. The Fennells were able to tear apart the trunk’s interior, find the release cable and free themselves. Realizing that their son was no longer in the back seat, they called police who discovered the boy unharmed outside their house. Fennell knows her family was lucky; the outcome could have been very different. And her work makes it clear she’s determined to make sure that’s the case for hundreds of other families.

By any definition, Fennell (who now lives in Kansas) is a safety crusader, someone who belongs on our growing list of citizens and groups determined to make the world a safer place.

Do you know any crusader we should meet? Please send us your nominations by adding your comments.

Comments

[Susan]

KUDOS to Janette Fennell for her tireless efforts to protect children!! The world needs more people like her!!!