Personal Injury Law

Children at risk of backover accidents in Illinois during holiday gatherings

By Kris Briggs

Our Chicago injury lawyers wish each of you a happy holiday season and encourage you to take extra precautions in keeping children safe around cars at family gatherings.

Backover accidents occur on an average of 50 children in the U.S. each week. As a result, 48 of those children are sent to the hospital with injuries while two others result in death. The common age of the children for these types of accidents is 12-23 months. Most often this tragedy happens in the child?s own driveway. More disturbing is the fact that 70 % of the time the driver is a family member or somehow related to the family.

Kids and Cars reports that between 2004 ? 2008 almost 42% of non-traffic fatalities involving children under the age of 15 were caused by backover accidents.

As vehicles get larger so do their blind spots. This is a significant factor in backover accidents. Consumer Reports found that some vehicles have a 50 foot long blind spot. For example, an experiment showed over 20 children fit in the blind spot of someone sitting in a large SUV. Over 60 % of backover accidents involve large size vehicles.

Tips to prevent this tragedy:

-Count the number of children playing near your vehicle before you get in and look to see that you can see all of them from inside the vehicle before moving.

-Roll down the windows and turn off the radio when reversing your car so that you can hear any child approaching the vehicle.

-When putting your car in reverse to back out of a driveway or parking spot, have complete control of the vehicle in order to stop immediately.

-If your car is moving in reverse, check all mirrors and look over both shoulders until it is safe to put your car in drive.

Though some vehicles come equipped with detection devices (back-up cameras, warning sounds) nothing takes the place of checking around your vehicle.

Full post as published by Illinois Injury Law Blog on November 22, 2010 (boomark / email).