Kids & Cars: Non-Traffic Motor Vehicle Accidents Cause Child Fatalities

Kids and Cars, a nonprofit organization devoting its efforts to child safety around vehicles, posts a statistic of concern for Florida drivers on its website: Florida is home to the third largest number of non-traffic fatalities to children under the age of 15 in the United States. From 1990 to December of 2006, the state of Florida saw 102 reported non-traffic fatalities around vehicles to children under 15, a number that Kids & Cars states is significantly lower than actual figures since many accidents go unreported. Among the most common accidents of this type are backover incidents. Nationally, backover accidents account for forty-four percent (44%) of child fatalities in non-traffic, vehicle-related accidents, a Kids & Cars statistic which Consumer Reports believes may relate to drivers not accounting for their large blind spots when backing up their vehicles. Second to backovers are “frontovers,” or instances in which drivers run over children in front of their cars, which account for seventeen percent (17%).

Regardless of the cause, even one child fatality is one too many, and Kids & Cars states its mission as assuring that “no child dies or is injured in a non-traffic, motor vehicle related event.” The numbers reveal that much work is still to be done: in the year 2008 alone, a minimum of 670 non-traffic incidents involving children under 15 years of age occurred in the U.S., which involved 910 children and resulted in 195 fatalities. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), the statistics are even higher: over 9,100 child injuries from non-traffic motor vehicle accidents were treated in hospital emergency departments in one year (from July 2000 to June 2001 for children under 14). If your child has been killed or injured in a non-traffic accident involving an automobile, we express our deepest sympathies to you. Injury Law Service has been handling cases such as these for over 10 years, and we will answer all of your questions for free with professionalism and compassion if you need any legal advice. We handle cases in Sunrise, Florida, and throughout the Ft. Lauderdale metropolitan area. Call 954-677-0155. Contact David M. Benenfeld today for a free initial consultation.