Kids and Cars puts in motion a grassroots campaign to reduce backovers

Sometimes common sense is all one needs to reduce a child’s risk of getting hurt. Sometimes it requires technology. A coalition of parents and safety groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, are counting on both those things — and a boost from bipartisan teams of congressional politicians — to drastically curb the number of kids injured in non-crash auto accidents.

Janette Fennell is the founder and president of Kids and Cars, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to assure no child dies or is injured in a non-traffic, non-crash motor vehicle event. About a year ago, she teamed with Jamie Schaefer-Wilson, a former TV producer turned safety advocate, to tackle a handful of specific issues: backovers, power windows and vehicles inadvertently knocked into motion.

The result is the Cameron Gulbransen Kids And Cars Safety Act, a bill sponsored by Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., John Sununu, R-N.H., in the Senate, and Peter King, R-N.Y., and Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., in the House. It’s named for a 2-year-old boy from Long Island, N.Y., who died when his father, a pediatrician, accidentally ran him over with the family sport-utility vehicle when backing into his driveway.

If the bill is passed, the Department of Transportation would be required to set a standard for what drivers should be able to see behind them when backing their vehicle. Auto makers would decide how best to meet that standard with technologies such as rear sensors, better rearview or side mirrors, and rearview cameras, which are already available on some higher-end vehicles. Also, it mandates automatic reversal of power windows if an obstruction is detected and a service brake that works in all key positions to prevent vehicles from rolling away if kicked into gear when the car is off.

According to Clinton, the window sensor is $12, the gear brake $5 and the backover system $300 — “cheaper than a DVD system.”

“The cost is really insignificant compared to what we’re trying to do; save children’s lives,” Sen. Clinton said during a recent telephone interview. “The technology is inexpensive and easily installed.”

She also predicted backover systems would come down in cost if it were mandatory, because more companies would be likely to start making them.

Clinton has high hopes for the bill’s passage, noting that it does have bipartisan support. “It’s a parent and family issue, not a partisan issue. It’s a problem with a practical solution,” she said.

Kids and Cars’ Fennell is no stranger to safety crusades. Back in 1995, Fennell, her husband and her then 9-month-old baby were kidnapped. She and her husband were locked in the trunk of a car. Her baby was left, thankfully strapped into his car seat, in the front yard of their San Francisco home.

Fennell, who now lives in Kansas, knows she and her loved ones are the rare survivors in that type of incident. That brought new meaning to her life.

“I said, ‘This is crazy.’ You shouldn’t be able to lock people in their own trunks. I did a four-year campaign and was able to get federal regulation passed. Any vehicle in the United States will have trunk release now,” she said during a phone interview.

She took on backovers and windows because accidents were happening and she said the government was not dealing with them. The government might not even have known they were happening because the database of fatal motor vehicle incidents, until last year, only covered crashes, incidents that happen on public roads or highways, and if victims die within 30 days of the incident, Fennell explained.

Backovers, for example, are most common in someone’s own driveway — and the majority of victims are children, she said.

“Carmakers don’t think about kids. If you look at the seatbelt system, it was built for a 170-pound male,” Fennell said. “This started out as a hot-car campaign and kicking cars into gear, but over the past three years, I saw a huge spike of kids being backed over. Backovers represent almost 50 percent of the fatalities we gather information on. We know of more than 100 kids who were backed over and killed last year, [ in which] 70 percent of the time a parent or close relative is behind the wheel,” she said.

She added: “The worst thing that could happen to a parent is to have their child killed. The only thing worse is if it happens at the parent’s hands.”

Fennell started her campaign by working with Consumer Reports magazine and then getting letters of support from affected families to pass along to members of Congress. She eventually linked with Schaefer-Wilson, who, like Clinton, lives in Westchester County, N.Y.

Schaefer-Wilson is the author of “The Baby Rules: The Insider’s Guide to Raising Your Parents,” a safety guide written from a child’s perspective.

She said they do their grassroots lobbying on their own time, and on their own dime.

One by one, federal legislators are signing onto the bill. Schaefer-Wilson said most recently, Sens. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, Conrad Burns, R-Mont., and Bill Nelson, D-Fla., signed on. She noted: “Fifty children are backed over a week. Two of them will die, and 48 will be injured. If you hear a figure like that, how can you not make it a priority?”

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