Missouri Safety Groups Sue Department of Transportation over Increasing Backover Accidents

photo credit: Janitors via Flickr

Car accident lawyers have long been raising concerns over increasing number of backover accidents occurring not only in Missouri, but all over the United States. The latest statistics reveal that more than 250 fatalities and over 18,000 injuries occur because of backover accidents. The sad part is that most of the victims are young children aged between 1-2 years. In most of these cases, the driver of the car is a close relative or parent of the victim.

Taking a view of such cases, US congress had passed the Cameron Gulbransen Kids Transportation Safety Act in 2008. The act mandated the use of such equipment in vehicles that could improve rear visibility. The act was named after the two year old son of Dr. Greg Gulbransen, Cameron, who had lost his life in a backover accident in which his father was driving the vehicle. The law was passed unanimously in senate and house, and was signed by President George Bush. Interestingly, the current President, Barack Obama, was one of the senators who said a yes to this act being passed.

Cameron Gulbransen Kids Transportation Safety Act had set a deadline of 3 years for the Department of Transportation to implement the mandate. DOT had 3 years to ensure that rear view cameras and other such equipment be installed in all vehicles in United States. However, even after 5 years of passing the act, it is yet to be implemented, and this is what is bothering many safety groups. DOT says that it still needs a couple of years to complete research and implementation for the law, which means the project would get completed by 2015.

Due to the delay in implementing this law, safety advocates say the number of fatalities and injuries caused by backover accidents is increasing by the day. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has revealed that since the law was passed in 2008, there have been 1,100 fatalities and more than 85,000 injuries caused by backover accidents. It is believed that more than 200 of these deaths could have been prevented if the law was implemented well in time. Safety groups feel that more than a hundred such preventable deaths will occur over the next two years till the implementation of the law.

The safety groups have filed a petition in the U.S. Court of Appeals requesting the court to issue a directive to the Department of Transportation to issue the law within 3 months. Safety groups believe that the delay is totally unreasonable, and is causing a risk to human lives, claiming that children are getting killed and injured.

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