Our Houston injury attorneys recently discussed the NHTSA’s proposal to require backup cameras in all passenger vehicles by 2014. We discussed the NHTSA proposal in light of a local accident that involved a woman who unwittingly backed over and seriously injured a young toddler as she pulled out to head to work.
Our Houston injury attorneys pointed out that automakers were trying to convince the NHTSA to drop the requirement because it would cost the manufacturers too much money to comply with the backup camera rule. Well, maybe the NHTSA has decided that your children’s safety isn’t worth the price to automakers.
In a sudden change of direction, lawmakers have announced that they won’t be implementing the proposed rule as expected. The NHTSA had been expected to issue the backup camera on February 29th. But now the U.S. agency has put any new rule off until at least the end of 2012 “for further study and data analysis.”
Our Houston injury attorneys ask just how much more study and data analysis could be needed? And why? The NHTSA’s own data says that approximately 200 children die each year in backover accidents and around another 18,000 are injured. The costs of these injuries and fatalities runs into many billions of dollars annually.
The automakers maintain that implementing backup cameras in all vehicles will cost them $1.9 to $2.7 billion, a smaller sum. But evidently U.S. lawmakers would rather spare automakers the expense of the backup cameras than spare you and your insurers the cost of your children’s injuries or fatalities.
Children aren’t the only group vulnerable to unintended backover accidents in the absence of backup cameras. Children make up 44% of those killed each year in backover accidents; those over 70 years of age make up another 33%. So if you are elderly or have reduced mobility, you’re also particularly vulnerable to injury or death because of the large blind spots generated by reversing vehicles. Pickup trucks and SUVs have particularly extensive blind spot areas that can hide people behind the backing vehicles from drivers’ view.
But in the grand scheme of things, automakers’ profits and concerns seem to carry more weight with U.S. lawmakers than concerns for your safety and well being or concerns for the safety and well being of the children, elderly, or disabled members of your family and community. This is the position indicated by the NHTSA’s failure to issue the expected rule requiring backup cameras in all vehicles by 2014. This Houston injury attorney would feel better if he could claim to be shocked by this turn of events. Deeply troubled: yes. Outraged: yes. But shocked: no. Lawmaker priorities regarding backup cameras must lie elsewhere than with your child’s safety.
For now, you and your family still bear the costs associated with safety. If you or a family member receive costly injuries from a wreck, contact this concerned Houston injury attorney for a free legal consultation. I could help you learn how to recover the cost from the one responsible for injuring you.