President Bush signs kids car safety act into law
Today the President signed into law the Cameron Gulbransen Kids Transportation Safety Act, which requires the Department of Transportation to issue regulations related to power window safety, rearward visibility and rollaway prevention. The signing comes two weeks after the Senate passed the measure; it was passed by the House late last year.
The bill was named after two-year-old Cameron, who was killed when he was inadvertently backed over by an SUV driven by his father because the blind zone behind the vehicle made it impossible to see the boy.
The new law addresses three of the most serious causes of preventable injuries and fatalities to young children in and around motor vehicles: being struck by a backing vehicle with an unacceptable blind zone, getting caught in an automatically closing power window; and the ability to place a vehicle in gear without having to depress the brake, resulting in an uncontrolled rollaway.
The Gulbransens and at least 21 other families whose children were killed or seriously injured in non-traffic vehicle accidents threw their support behind passage of the bill as did a broad coalition that included Kids And Cars, Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, Public Citizen, Center for Auto Safety, CFA, NCL, the Trauma Foundation, and Consumers Union. We applaud the president's action.
Posted by: Karl | Feb 29, 2008 12:50:40 PM
I'm a little puzzled. Does anyone actually make a car that you can take out of park without first putting your foot on the brake? I thought we figured out the importance of this feature 20 yrs ago. As for the other two, I don't know, I guess, but isn't the power window lock another one of those time tested standard features like child safety locks from two decades ago? Is congress that far behind the times?