Kids left in cars, frontover/backover accidents rise around holidays
JACKSON, Tenn. — According to Kids and Car Safety, leaving children in a hot car, as well as frontover and backover accidents, are high during the celebration of holidays.
“The State of Tennessee is ranked #8 in the country with the most hot car deaths, and there have been 38 documented fatalities that we’ve seen there,” said Amber Rollins, Director of Kids and Car Safety.
Rollins said that they want families to take this danger seriously.
“So many people think this is something that could never happen to them. And that makes sense,” Rollins said. “It’s such a hard thing to understand when you love your children and they’re your whole world, but I can tell you, after working on this issue for almost 20 years, it’s something that happens to the most safety conscious, wonderful, educated parents. It can literally happen to anybody.”
She said one of the best ways to avoid this issue is using the “look before you lock” safety checklist.
“Put something in the backseat on the floor that requires you to open that back door and check the backseat every time you leave the vehicle,” Rollins said. “Grab a giant stuffed animal. This stuffed animal is going to be your reminder item. It lives in the backseat of your car. Any time you buckle the kids in, you bring that item up to the front seat with you as a visual cue that your child is with you.”
Additionally, every vehicle has a blind zone where children cannot be seen.
Frontover and backover accidents with children have also grown over time due to changes in vehicle designs.
A frontover is when a car is moving slowly forward and it injures a child, whereas a backover is that a child was struck by a vehicle while it was backing up.
Rollins said to always remember that around the holidays, the risk of backovers and frontovers grows.
She also said that about 68% of kids that get in the car on their own are little boys that age from 1 to 4-years-old.
“That is the time in a child’s life where we see them start to sneak out of the house unnoticed,” said Rollins. “So that child-proofing in the home is so important to prevent children getting into hot cars, children being run over in the driveway because someone pulling in or backing out couldn’t see them, or drowning in a body of water that’s near the home.”
Every week, at least 60 children are injured or killed when they are run over by a slow moving vehicle.
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