Car Tragedies Can Be Avoided
Well, this settles the argument over who gets to sit in the front seat.
Auto makers and safety advocates are now saying children under 13 shouldn’t be in the front seat at all, particularly if the vehicle has a passenger-side air bag.
It could kill them.
A painful reminder came Wednesday. A year-old baby girl was killed in Boise when her mother’s car bumped into another car in a parking lot. The force of the air bag - coming at 200 miles an hour - decapitated the little girl. What should have been a minor fender-bender turned tragic for one family, and turned the nation’s attention to the defects of a device that was supposed save lives, not take them.
For the past six years, virtually every new car or truck has come equipped with an air bag. Many of them come with passenger-side bags.
And while the lives of 1,500 people since 1990 have been saved in part by air bags, 50 have died in mostly minor accidents. About 32 were children, the others were short women or senior citizens.
The reason the bags have such potential for disaster is they were designed for 180-pound men who don’t wear seatbelts.
So what are the rest of us to do? It doesn’t make sense to have the air bags deactivated, though for some people that may be the only solution. There are other, smarter steps to be taken first.
First of all, all people in a vehicle should wear a seatbelt. Fewer than 60 percent of all Americans wear the safety devices, despite overwhelming evidence that the small effort saves lives. Most of the adults who died because of air bags weren’t belted in.
Parents should keep children buckled up in the back seat whenever possible. If a child must be in the front seat, move the seat back as far as possible and make sure the child is buckled in. Never use a rear-facing car seat in the front seat of a vehicle.
Small adults should try to maintain 12 inches between their chests and the steering wheel. A mechanic can adjust or build up the pedals to make reaching them easier.
Finally, all Americans should keep up the pressure on auto makers and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Already there has been talk of a “smart” air bag, a device that deploys at varying degrees depending on the seriousness of the accident and the size of the person in the seat. But that technology is at least two years off.
In the meantime, the safety administration is considering approving a decrease in the air bag deployment by 20 to 30 percent. They may also make it legal for people to dismantle their air bags.
Both moves would help. But until then, parents and drivers must remain vigilant.
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Anne Windishar/For the editorial board