Backup accidents can be very dangerous and result in more than 200 fatalities every year in the United States. An additional 17,000 people are injured every year in these dangerous but preventable accidents.
Many children are injured and killed by backover deaths. The Department of Transportation reports that 44 percent of backover accident fatalities involve children under the age of 5. What’s worse is that most of the accidents are caused by a parent or family member driving the vehicle.
In an effort to reduce backover accidents, families and safety groups have filed a lawsuit against the DOT. The lawsuit is requesting that the court force the DOT to issue a final ruling on rearview cameras in their safety guidelines within 90 days.
The DOT has already recommended that new vehicles install rearview cameras, but safety groups want the cameras to mandatory and not just a safety recommendation to auto manufacturers. Safety groups say that rearview cameras can prevent backover accidents because the cameras allow drivers to see people or objects behind their vehicle and in blind spots, they otherwise wouldn’t be able to see.
Many new vehicles have already installed rearview cameras, with seven in 10 new vehicles having the equipment as standard or optional features. However, safety groups want all new vehicles to have rearview cameras as a standard feature to reduce the risk of more backover deaths in the future.
Backover accidents can result in very serious and fatal injuries, especially among young children. Parents and caretakers of children should always be careful when backing out of a driveway when children are around. It is also beneficial to consider driving a vehicle with a rearview camera to prevent these horrible accidents from happening.
Source: CNN, “DOT, safety advocates feud over rear-view camera recommendation,” Mike M. Ahlers, Sept. 26, 2013