Child safety – driveway accidents
As young people have moved freely for their careers and lifestyles many of us grandparents now have grandchildren in distant cities. We cannot be there to help out with the challenges of raising children.
When I visited my son in Melbourne it was a pleasure to be able to provide real help and he appreciated it so much. I felt pretty somber though seeing how unaware he and his wife were of dangers that were glaringly obvious to me.
I left feeling that my precious granddaughter would need a lot of luck to make it through the hazard course but doing anything to help wasn’t at all easy. Giving the kids a whole lot of warnings would be far more likely to antagonize them and have them dismiss the dangers than go through the sharp learning curve and increase in awareness that was needed.
In the meantime there is actually a reaction about what is seen as the ‘nanny state’ by many young parents. Certainly there are some situations that are very controlled like how we manage car safety inside vehicles or how we manage safety in childcare centres or swimming pool enclosures.
But I think young parents are wrong is thinking that children need to be set free to learn from their own encounters with the world.
Even though I grew up running almost wild as a child riding bikes for miles playing in the local swamp swimming in big surf catching the bus into town alone to go to Dad’s work as a little child even taking a train ride right across Europe unaccompanied at only 14… Yet I think the world is a much more dangerous place today and that we shouldn’t downplay the real dangers to children.
Nor should we downplay the damage that we suffered from our free-roaming childhoods in the olden days. Many children were killed. My husband very nearly died from being run over by a motor bike on the quiet road outside his home and his skull is very bumpy even to this day from the damage he sustained. My father’s brother was killed on the quiet road out the front. An uncle was burned to death in a laundry fire. My grandfather’s brother was accidentally shot when the kids played with a loaded rifle.
Even the story about how exposure to dirt and germs is good for your immune system does not gell with me. I had a lot of exposure to good old dirt right from the start living with ducks and a great garden. I got out in the dirt and was reputed to like trying to eat snails. Well it didn’t do me any good at all. I got asthma and allergies starting from about aged two. We had lots of bad sore throats and sneezing.
However there are many dangers around today that weren’t present or were relatively minor compared to today. We didn’t have identity theft that is now occurring with children in the US. Predators existed but there was not the vast pornography industry turning predation on children into a global industry. Motor vehicles were quite uncommon and traffic on the roads was sparse. Dare I say it? The standards of courtesy and good community behaviour and neighbourliness were high.
First thing back home I got on the Internet and did a lot of study about the risks facing modern children. What I found was truly alarming. So alarming that I couldn’t help but think we need a major government focus on safety for children and safety training for parents. We do this for Occupational Health and Safety but we don’t do it for our little children and they die and get damaged for life in alarming numbers.
This didn’t make my challenge of doing whatever I could to improve my granddaughter’s chances any easier. Pretty much I had to leave it to prayer. I recognised the problem. Research cold provide a clear list of steps to reduce her risk. But the challenge of getting the young parents to take them on board and recognise the need was a whole huge challenge bigger. I had to be patient and on the watch for opportunities.
The first one came with a brochure in the vets about the danger of leaving a dog in a hot car. It could die in 7 minutes the brochure said. My son has a puppy. He’d accept the brochure warning about the danger to the dog and would likely indirectly get the message about the dangers of hot cars to my granddaughter.
Then The Weekend Australian Magazine came up with the perfect answer to my prayers on the top danger on my list: Driveway accidents. The article is titled “The worst thing that could happen has happened – cars driveways – and children. It can take a second for tragedy to strike but the fallout lasts forever.” The article is by Kate Legge. Good on Kate!
I’ve torn it out to send to my son. Brilliantly written. Not my words but the words of other young parents who are living with the tragedy of having killed their own toddler.
This article is so important I want to share highlights from it with you. These are our precious children we need to protect.
Toddlers under two are most at risk of driveway accidents. An average eight children die in this way every year but preliminary figures from non-fatal injury indicate a much larger problem than the death data implies. An estimated 150 children in Queensland are run over each year – that’s three a week!
“Low-speed vehicle run-over incidents” are “an epidemic”. There’s been a doubling in emergency cases in some hospitals.
Survivors suffer multiple traumas broken limbs bowel injuries abdominal bruising pelvic injuries.
The need is to be forever watchful between house and kerb.
Children under 5 make up 44% of the fatalities from back-over incidents and are overrepresented in the injured.
“Try being the person who’s behind the wheel. You have suddenly caused the death of the person you love more than anyone on Earth.”
Kids are quick… they don’t stand a chance. How can a 15kg child withstand the force of a 1500kg vehicle?
Accidents often happen within a 5km radius from home a zone where familiarity dulls vigilance and reflexes slip into automatic pilot. Residential driveways should be tagged with a skull and crossbones.
Drivers have never been busier with mobile phones and dashborad prompts. What of a small quickly moving child out of sight.
Some of the phrases parents who have run over and killed their toddler use are “you didn’t mean for it to happen” “The worst thing that could happen” “shaken the earth from beneath us”.
Having killed their own toddler they become hyper-anxious of children playing around vehicles.
The develop a desire to alert other parents to the potential for tragedy. They want regulations to fence off driveways. “If they can do it with swimming pools why can’t they do it with driveways?” Legislation fencing off driveways is at the top of the wishlist. “Driveways must be separated from play areas i all new houses. Existing home should be given five years to comply.”
But the most important thing is awareness. Everyone needs to be aware this is a major problem. Drivers must check around the vehicle before reversing. Sensors and cameras are all very well but if you don’t look or the child is too fast accidents will still happen.”
Technology isn’t failsafe. 4WDs are most likely to be the villain in a driveway fatality. 4WDs and light commercial vehicles were involved in 70% of driveway fatalities but only 15% of the total number of driveway accidents.
Road vehicle expert conducted the first rearward visibility trials. “Every car we tested had poor rearward visiblity for toddlers.” “Cameras are far from 100% effective. Drivers don’t look at them always and in two seconds a child can dart behind a car.”
Fewer than 1% of the vehicles tested as part of the NRMA Insurance’s Reversing Visibility Index received the maximum 5-star rativng for how well a driver can see out the back of a car.
There is no substitute for adult supervision of children around cars.
Car design has concentrated exclusively on occupant safety. Now manufacturers need to focus on the safety of pedestrians. If a child walks under a car or straight behind the bumper bar no camera is going to pick them up.
We latch cupboards full of toxic cleaning appliance. Before we leave the house we lock up and turn off appliances and make sure the bathroom window is closed.
Peter Cockburn will never forget the light bump to the rear of his trailer as he reversed into the garage at the end of a day’s work. Only the gentlest hint of resistance signalled that his slowly moving vehicle had come into contact with an object in its path. He screamed for his wife. They kneeled beside the smallest of their girls but they knew deep down she was gone.
Emma says her daughter was a ‘climber’. She frequently made a beeline towards the door.
They have since raised the handle and installed a heavier door with a self-closing device. The older girls have all been taught to wait for visiting cars to stop before rushing outside.
Emma says: “We were both at fault. I didn’t stop to check the kids. He assumed the kids were in a safe place. We never thought to lift the door handle beyond a toddler’s reach.” No amount of activity or distraction can lessen the pain. Georgina’s death haunts them always. Nothing will bring her back but Emma hopes that her legacy might spare another toddler’s life.
“Most accidents come down to human error” she pleads. “People aren’t aware. they don’t take that initiative to take one last look to see everything is OK. You have got to be so vigilant. even if we put fences up it won’t stop all deaths from happening. But it will make people more aware. We didn’t want anything to happen to our child.”
Hear the agony. Heed the story. Hasten slowly.
US group Kids and Cars says “We need to change people’s mindsets.”