Part One of a Two-Part Article
Product liability litigation sometimes arises when children are injured in and around motor vehicles ' whether it involves a moving or non-moving vehicle. When evaluating responsibility, the acts, omissions, and fault of the caregiver, parent, or person responsible for the child must be considered. In defending this type of litigation, evaluating such responsibility is part of the overall analysis of the design and performance of the motor vehicle and whether having different or additional safety technology would have made a difference or resulted in a different outcome.
Motor vehicles are responsible for one of every five deaths among children aged 1-14 years in the United States. (National Center for Heath Statistics. Vital statistics mortality data, underlying causes of death.) When most people consider a child's motor vehicle-related injury or death, child safety restraints and airbags immediately come to mind. However, the non-traffic, non-crash motor vehicle incidents resulting in injury or death to children are steadily rising. Since 2001, over 1,000 children have died in non-traffic incidents. A 2002 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study reported that over 9,160 children are treated in hospital emergency rooms due to non-traffic incidents. Kids and Cars, an organization promoting information and resources about the dangers associated with leaving children unattended in or around vehicles, maintains a national database tracking deaths and injuries to children. Kids and Cars reports that backovers (incidents involving children being struck by or rolled over by a vehicle moving in reverse) and hypothermia (heat stroke resulting from a child being left unattended in a motor vehicle) represent the leading types of non-traffic fatalities involving children under the age of 15. Backovers represent 49.5% of fatalities, followed by hypothermia at 19.6%. (http://www.kidsincars.org/., Statistics.)
The Backover Epidemiology
Driveway safety can be one of the most demanding responsibilities for parents and caregivers alike. Most often, the residential driveway is the location of backover incidents. During 2001-2003, an estimated 7,475 children aged 1-14 years were treated for non-fatal motor vehicle backover injuries in U.S. hospital emergency rooms. (Nonfatal Motor-Vehicle Related Backover Injuries Among Children ' United States 2001-2003, Centers for Disease Control, Feb. 18, 2005, 54(06); 144-146.) According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), each year vehicles in the process of backing up kill over 100 people and injure over 6,000. The majority of these victims are children, with the most common scenario involving a toddler who is accidentally hit when a vehicle is being backed out of a driveway, often by a family member, neighbor, or friend. Children under the age of 5 are at the highest risk for injury for a backover injury because often their small size makes them difficult for the vehicle's driver to see, especially if the child is in one of the driver's blind spots. (Vehicle Backover Avoidance Technology Study, November 2006, Report to Congress, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA.) Further, children at this age have a limited comprehension of the dangers present in playing unattended inside or around a vehicle, and have a limited ability to protect themselves.
Most backover incidents involve larger vehicles, such as SUVs, small trucks and vans because a vehicle's rear blind spot typically increases with vehicle size. (Death and Injuries Resulting from Certain Non-Traffic and Non-Crash Events, NHTSA, May 2004.) However, backovers can occur with any vehicle because all have blind spots. New vehicle technology, combined with attentive parents and caregivers, can serve to reduce the risk of an injury event occurring; technology cannot do this job alone, no matter how sophisticated.
The Hypothermia Epidemiology
Every year, children die from hypothermia (heat stroke) after being left unattended in a vehicle. There were 327 reported fatalities between 1998 and 2006, and 35 deaths were reported in 2007. Hypothermia Deaths of Children in Vehicles, Department of Geosciences, San Francisco State University, June 4, 2007 and http://www.kidsincars.org.statistics/. A recent survey revealed that many parents and caregivers have left a child under the age of 12 unattended in a vehicle, suggesting that these adults are not aware of the potential deadly consequences that can occur. The same survey revealed that one out of every four U.S. adults with children under the age of 18 have left a child alone in a vehicle. (DEADLY MISTAKES: New Survey Shows Nearly 1 Out of Every 4 U.S. Adults with Children Under 18 at Home Have Left a Child Alone in a Vehicle, May 24, 2005, Kids and Cars.) Most incidents of hypothermia fatalities occur because the child is simply forgotten by the driver. (Id., citing Guard, A. & Callagher, S.S.: Heat-related Deaths to Young Children in Parked Cars: An Analysis of 171 Fatalities in the United States, 1995-2002. Injury Prevention 11, 33-37. ) However, children, who are curious and unpredictable can sometimes gain access to an unlocked vehicle and not know how to get out.
Injury or death to children left unattended in vehicles can happen in minutes, occurring faster in humid heat as compared with dry heat. (Id.) Hypothermia injuries occur when the core body temperature reaches 104 degrees F. (Id.) According to a study performed by the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, at an ambient temperature of 93 degrees F, a car parked in direct sunlight can reach between 131 to 172 degrees F, after only 15 minutes. (Id.) However, studies reveal that child deaths are not limited to hot-weather states. Since 1998, at least 323 incidents occurred on days with relatively mild (i.e., 70 degrees F) temperatures. (Id.) Cracking a window has little effect in protecting children left unattended in a vehicle because it does not decrease the rate of temperature rise in the vehicle. (Id.)
The Kids and Cars Safety Act of 2007
In 2005, a bill cited as the 'Cameron Gulbranson Kids and Cars Safety Act of 2005' and aimed at decreasing the incidence of child injury and death due to non-traffic incidents was introduced. Sponsored by Senators Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and John Sununu (R-NH), and named in honor of a 2-year-old Long Island, NY, boy who was killed when his father accidentally backed his vehicle over him in his driveway, this Act was aimed at minimizing injuries to children in and around vehicles with the assistance of life-saving automotive safety improvements. The Act initially focused on power window safety to prevent children from becoming entrapped and strangled by power windows, brake-transmission shift interlock to prevent injury or death from unintentional shifting of a parked vehicle into gear and causing it to roll away, and improved rearward visibility to prevent backover incidents. In 2007, an amendment to the Kids and Cars Safety Act included a provision that would require all light passenger vehicles to have Driver Reminder Systems, notifying the driver if passengers remained in any of the rear seating positions of the vehicle when the ignition switch was in the 'off' position. While sensors to detect children left in vehicles have since been deleted from the legislation, consumer groups continue to push for such regulations. The Cameron Gulbranson Kids Transportation Safety Act has been signed into law by President Bush.
Recent Advances in Vehicle Technology Aimed at Protecting Children
Child passenger safety has been of utmost importance in product development in the automotive industry. Millions of dollars have been expended researching, designing, developing and increasing child vehicle safety over the past decade. From rear-seat child comfort guides to the retrofit trunk anti-entrapment systems, the automotive industry has been at the forefront of child passenger safety. Recent vehicle technology aimed at protecting children from backovers and hypothermia include visual back-up systems cameras and sensors that provide the driver with a visual of an area behind the vehicle and occupant detection systems that alert the driver if a passenger has been left in the rear seat.
Part Two of this article will discuss back-up warning systems, occupant detection sensors, the role of parents and caregivers in vehicle-related accidents, and the new type of litigation spawned by new technology.
