Driveways, Children and Poor Rear Vision: A Deadly Modern Cocktail
What’s the second-most frequent way for a child in Australia to die accidentally? Here are a few of hints: It’s not drowning in the backyard swimming pool (that’s actually the most common way). It’s not being run over in the traffic. It’s not falling off the back deck or the third-floor balcony, either, or electrocution, or suffocating with a plastic shopping bag over its head while mum or dad chats on the phone.
It’s clearly an area where urgent regulatory reform is needed.
When I reported on the first RVI results a few years ago, on radio, I was promptly telephoned by a representative of a major Japanese car importer, whose products really didn’t rate so well, then or now. This person told me, in no uncertain terms, that the RVI was essentially hokum because there was no standard for reversing vision globally, and because the company in question designs its vehicles to meet global (and Australian) standards. Therefore, there was no problem.
The car industry, however, now sees the benefit of selling five-star crashworthiness because buyers increasingly demand it. In fact, a growing class of informed car buyer won’t consider buying a new vehicle if it lacks stability control and head-protecting side airbags – a very smart consumer call. (And if you disagree, just visit the brain injury unit of a major hospital. That should convince you.)
Perhaps the NRMA is on a similar trip with the RVI. Let’s hope so for the sake of the 50+ children who will be cleaned up in home driveways over the next 12 months.
The same consumer presumptions pertain to cars – even though in some cases the standards that are presumed broadly to exist simply do not. (Take a look at the minimum standards for crashworthiness for light commercial vehicles, for example. Ask yourself why manufacturers like Ssangyong, Proton, Mahindra and Mitsubishi, respectively, are allowed even to field the Actyon, Jumbuck, Pik-up and Express for sale in Australia in the 21st Century. It’s an embarrassment that the Federal Government will not acknowledge even in the face of expert advice to act.)
The RVI highlights a few perception-slashing results. For example: It’s not 4WDs alone that offer pathetic rear vision of young children – in fact there are many more zero-star rated cars in the RVI than there are zero-star 4WDs. (This is mainly thanks to the growing number of 4WDs with reversing cameras.) There are more five-star RVI 4WDs than there are five-star small cars.
Protecting children in driveways is about managing risk, and the best approach using established risk-management principles is to apply safer vehicles and better human safeguards. In other words, we need safer cars driven by safer drivers in safer driveways.
(An advertising campaign highlighting the benefits of walking around the car before backing out, reversing slowly with the windows down and the stereo off, and making sure you know where the kids are before you move the car would be a damn good start.)