Car accident tragedies kill more kids than any other danger
Most parents are extremely protective of kids. But anytime they take them in a car or other vehicle they’re exposing them to the No. 1 killer of America’s children. Indeed, child safety advocate group Safe Kids USA reports that car accidents and other motor vehicle mishaps are the chief cause of child deaths between ages 3 and 14.
That’s confirmed by the National Center for Statistics and Analysis, which says car accidents are the top cause of deaths in kids aged 2-14. The center also says car accidents injure 250,000 American kids yearly. With about 2,000 of them suffering fatal injury, children are the victims in 5 per cent of America’s fatal traffic accidents. And unlike adults, it’s safe to say that no such child has caused the car accident in which he or she died.
Longtime Texas personal injury lawyer Jim S. Adler has seen more than enough of this. For years he has championed children’s safety, both as a citizen and as an attorney, which is why he joined Safe Kids Greater Houston. And for years one of Adler’s safety messages has been this: Booster seats save lives.
Adler hammers home that message again in a new commentary for the Houston Chronicle calling for Texas legislators to pass a booster seat law. This would require kids under age 8 — unless they’re over 4-feet-9-inches tall — to be in booster seats when riding in a vehicle. Adler points out that Texas is among only six states without a booster seat law.
With such laws, many children can be saved from death or serious injury. But even then, Adler advises that parents must learn the proper installation of child booster seats. Safe Kids estimates that 80 per cent of booster seats are not installed properly, and even the smallest mistakes can cause serious injury or death to a child. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is in the same ballpark, finding that at least 72 per cent of tested child safety seats were not installed properly.
The NCSA says failure to use a child safety seat — or use it properly — is a factor in more than half of America’s child fatalities in car accidents. In other words, more than 1,000 American kids could be saved annually if they were provided a properly installed booster seat.
Children — especially kids under 4 — also are very vulnerable to pedestrian injuries when outside of a car. In fact, about 10 per cent of child pedestrian deaths happen in driveways, when a driver doesn’t notice a child nearby and hits him or her. Too, children often are left inside of vehicles too long in hot weather months and then succumb to heat. That’s another danger worth noting as temperatures climb toward summer.
The enormity of this crisis is that children can be killed or injured in so many ways in a car accident or pedestrian accident. Essentially, cars, trucks and other vehicles are kids’ greatest enemy.
Yet it’s the drivers of these vehicles who bear the burden of responsibility, and they include parents who need to place kids in properly installed car seats and buckle them up with a seatbelt before putting a key in the ignition — every time.
Adler and his Texas car accident lawyer team at Jim S. Adler & Associates know well these dangers to children, and fight against them. But even after a car accident tragedy occurs, they can help as well.
Alert an auto accident attorney or Texas car accident lawyer with Jim S. Adler & Associates if your child or another loved one has been harmed in a car accident due to another person’s negligence. Then that person will be held accountable in the legal realm.
With such actions, with greater public awareness and with the new legislation which Adler supports, the tide of child car accident deaths can be turned. Clearly it will take much work, but saving even one child’s life will make it all worthwhile.
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[...] Safety Matters, which focuses on child-proofing homes, says about 1,000 children under 14 die each year from unintentional strangulation, and of those, 88 per cent are under 4. The sad truth is that, with small children, it doesn’t take much to cause a tragedy, whether in the home, at a pool or in or around an automobile. [...]