Sununu, Clinton Reintroduce Child Car Safety Bill
SAFETY
New Hampshire Union Leader
Alyssa Marcus
Boston University Washington News Service
February 27, 2007
WASHINGTON, Feb. 27 – Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., reintroduced Tuesday a bill to require vehicles to have safety features to reduce the incidence of child injury and death in non-traffic accidents.
Sununu and bill co-sponsor Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., held a press conference on Capitol Hill with family members of seven children who were either killed or injured in a non-traffic car accident.
“The only way you’re going to prevent these accidents from happening is to design [new safety measures] on the cars,” said Packy Campbell of Farmington, N.H., whose son Ian was killed in his driveway in April 2004.
Ian Campbell was killed when his four-year-old brother accidentally set a truck in motion.
The bill would require manufacturers to add three features to all vehicles: a backup warning system for drivers; windows that would automatically go down if there were an obstruction, to prevent children from being trapped or strangled; and emergency brakes that would have to be engaged before the car could be put in park.
Sununu says that there’s no question that the bill is going to go farther this time than it did in 2005 when, he said, it was introduced too late in the session for meaningful consideration.
“The only challenge is making sure that we don’t just go further, but we actually put it over the finish line” he said. The bill is more likely to get through this Congress because it is being introduced early in the session, he added.
Campbell agreed with Sununu’s assessment. “We’re very optimistic,” Campbell said. “I think last year we broke a lot of momentum on this issue, we educated a lot of folks on it… we got a lot of commitments from folks who support this bill and support safety of children.”
According to Kids and Cars, an organization whose mission is to make sure that children are no longer killed in non-traffic vehicle-related accidents, at least 50 children are backed over by a vehicle each week. Of these children, two die.
Since 2000 more than 1,000 children have died in non-traffic accidents, according to Kids and Cars.
“Great parents are suffering great tragedies,” Campbell said. “These are not unreasonable requests from consumers to say that we should not be making these options.”
Clinton added: “These small steps will help protect the smallest among us and I cannot stress strongly enough how we all feel that this has to be a priority.”
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