INTELLIGENT VEHICLE SYSTEMS

CDC report calls for evaluation of technology to protect children
National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study calls for interventions to counteract high, and under-reported, accidents involving children and vehicles off of public roads. Several organizations want widespread deployment of ITS countermeasures that could prevent injuries to children when cars back up.

    A new report by the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sheds light on a black hole of vehicle safety data – the high number of accidents involving children and vehicles that are not in traffic. Safety advocates and companies offering ITS preventative technology hope that the report will draw attention to what Janette Fennell calls an epidemic.

"This report is one of the most significant things that has happened on this issue," says Fennell, the co-founder and executive director of Kids 'n Cars. "It gives a dimension to how big this problem is" and "will also hopefully prod NHTSA [the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration] to do more," she says.

The biggest problems are hyperthermia and backing-up accidents; both are areas where ITS countermeasures are offered or are being developed. The CDC says such technology should be evaluated. Kids 'n Cars, a safety advocacy group, takes a more aggressive approach. "Quit stalling and start installing," Fennell says.

The CDC reviewed reports from hospital emergency rooms for a one-year period and estimates that 9,160 children aged 14 years and younger suffered nonfatal injuries occurring in or around vehicles that were not in traffic. In addition, using data from Kids 'n Cars, the CDC says that at least 78 children died from such accidents during the same time period.

"National attention concerning motor vehicles (MVs) and child safety has focused largely on protecting children as occupants transported in traffic on public roads. However, children who are unattended in or around MVs that are not in traffic also are at increased risk for injury and death," according to the study published in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

The report calls for "effective interventions," specifically "education, legislation, regulation, and changes in vehicle design." The CDC says children might be protected "by commercially available vehicle enhancements, such as sensors that detect unseen obstacles behind an MV or devices that emit audible signals when an MV is in reverse. Evaluation of such interventions should be conducted to inform policy makers about their effectiveness in reducing non-traffic MV-related injuries and deaths among children."

The CDC report was published early last month and Beverly Snyder, public relations manager for the Donnelly Corp., an automotive supplier, calls it a good start. "I think it is raising public awareness though actually not as much as I thought it would. I'm kind of startled by the fact that there wasn't more attention paid to the CDC report because, in my opinion, these accidents are under-reported, even in the official report from the CDC."

In fact, the CDC acknowledges the limitations of its data, especially regarding fatalities. The CDC and every other organization looking into these types of accidents point out the need for better data collection.

Donnelly uses a clipping service that monitors newspapers around the country and has found that the reports of non-traffic vehicle-related fatalities are basically confined to small town newspapers. Kids 'n Cars, a project of the Trauma Foundation, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco, collects data from news reports, police reports, Internet searches, and studies. It compiled information on 817 accidents through the year 2000 but had to leave out another 650 accidents because of insufficient detail.

Kids 'n Cars says that 101 children died in non-traffic vehicle-related events in calendar year 2001, and that there have been 60 deaths this year, as of the end of last month.

In the CDC report, over 70 percent of the deaths and almost half of the nonfatal injuries occurred near a home; in half of the fatal accidents, the child lived at the home. In 57 percent of the deaths that occurred while the vehicle was in reverse, the driver was a parent.

These statistics track the trends that Kids 'n Cars has found. Fennell says there is a huge peak in backing-up accidents for one-year-old children. "What happens is that Mom and Dad don't even think that the kids could follow them out because they never have," she says.

"These are called freak accidents. These are not freak accidents. These are predictable and they're preventable and they're tragedies," she says.

An expert panel convened by Kids 'n Cars wants NHTSA to expand its data collection efforts to include non-traffic vehicle-related incidents and, more broadly, calls for a strategic plan for children and automotive safety. The panel, composed of representatives from many organizations, would like this to culminate in automotive product redesign.

Until production vehicles incorporate design improvements, the group calls for the use of aftermarket products to improve safety. "Examples of such products include but are not limited to: mirrors and backup devices that detect and warn of the presence of children; and sensing/warning devices that alert adult drivers and passengers when children are left in the vehicle," it says.

The CDC report is in the July 5, 2002, issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, available at www.cdc.gov/mmwr/weekcvol.html. A Kids 'n Cars website, with extensive links, is at www.kidsncars.org.

(Figure and table not included0


NHTSA is reviewing death certificates for non-crash injuries

Claude Harris, the director of the Office of Crash Avoidance Standards in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), says the agency has the jurisdiction to look at vehicle-related non-traffic accidents, "but historically our focus has been on traffic-related accidents."

"Historically the amount of accidents that have occurred in non-traffic ways have not been significant enough to warrant our attention, but in the last couple of years we have been looking at several of what we call non-crash injury events," he adds.

The first investigation was of trunk entrapment of children following the summer of 1998, when 11 children died locked in car trunks. NHTSA's review culminated in a rulemaking requiring interior releases on trunks.

Harris said he was not familiar with the National Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report that reviewed additional non-traffic incidents. But he says the statistics that the CDC is reporting – 9,160 injuries and 78 deaths in a one-year period – are significant enough to warrant NHTSA action, particularly because the statistics are about children. "We try to do everything we can to address children's injuries and fatalities," he says.

In fact, NHTSA is in the midst of a study of non-crash injury events, the kind that particularly involve children. Last year it reviewed death certificates for 1997, and it is now gearing up to review death certificates for 1998 through 2000.

"Based on our evaluation and review of that data we will try to determine if there are any significant safety issues that we need to focus more attention on," Harris says. He anticipates that the review will continue through the first quarter of next year.

In the review of the 1997 documents, he says the agency found about 30 heat-related deaths involving children, primarily caused by children being left inside vehicles during hot weather.

NHTSA published a request for comments on its rulemaking priorities last month.


Ford puts rear-looking radar system on three models

Technology that automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) offer to assist in backing up is focused on parking maneuvers and is usually based on ultrasound, which is limited in its effectiveness. But Delphi Corp. in Troy, Mich., is supplying an aid that uses radar on three Ford and Lincoln Mercury vehicles in the 2003 model year.

The Delphi Forewarn Back Up Aid, an outgrowth of its work on collision avoidance technologies, will be offered by Ford as the Extended Rear Park Assist. The system uses a 17-GHz radar sensor in conjunction with two ultrasonic sensors to detect stationary and moving objects in the rear path of the vehicle, up to a distance of about five meters.

The system is activated automatically when the vehicle is put into reverse. The driver hears an audible warning that increases in intensity as the vehicle gets closer to an object on the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator vehicle models. An implementation on the Lincoln Town Car will also have visual LED alerts.

Nissan offers a video technology on its Infiniti Q45. The system consists of a rear-looking video camera and a dashboard display and operates when the vehicle is shifted into reverse.

Discussing ultrasonic parking assist systems, spokespeople for Chrysler and General Motors emphasize that they are not effective in detecting children.

A typical system is Parktronic, which Mercedes-Benz offers as an option. It uses ultrasound to detect objects close to the front and rear bumpers and informs the driver by means of visual and audible signals that vary according to the distance between the object and the vehicle.

General Motors includes a similar system as a standard feature on the Cadillac Escalade and select Oldsmobile Silhouette models, and offers it as an option on six other vehicles.

Information on Delphi's Forewarn collision warning systems is available at www.delphiauto.com/automotive/handling/forewarn. The Mercedes USA website at www.mbusa.com features a virtual demonstration of the Parktronic system.


Aftermarket technologies target backing-up accidents

Independent vendors and entrepreneurs, often start-ups, are aggressively developing and promoting technologies that could help prevent backing-up accidents.

The Donnelly Corp. in Holland, Mich., offers an automotive camera technology called VideoMirror with ReversAid. When the vehicle is in reverse a rearview image appears on a small video screen attached to the rearview mirror. Magna International in Aurora, Ont., recently announced that it is acquiring Donnelly.

Sense Technologies in Charlotte, N.C., began shipping its Guardian Alert Backing Awareness System to the Hendrick Automotive Group, a chain of 60 automotive dealerships, in June. The Guardian Alert uses a Doppler radar sensor mounted at the rear of a vehicle to detect the presence of "objects or people" and alerts the driver with beeps and flashing lights.

American Dealer Services in Encino, Calif., is promoting a Micro 3 Bak-Talk technology that, as the name implies, detects obstacles when a vehicle is in reverse and then tells drivers "in a clear and realistic female voice" how many feet the obstacles are from the car. The company says the unit uses echolocation sonar technology, based on three acoustic sensors, and can recognize objects from one to eight feet from the car.

Rostra Precision Controls in Laurinburg, N.C., offers the Rostra Obstacle Sensing System (ROSS). It uses Doppler radar to detect obstacles as far away as 12 feet behind the vehicle. It alerts the driver with a three-color visual LED and an adjustable audible tone.

American Road Products in Santa Ana, Calif., offers ReverseGuard, a product that uses four ultrasonic sensors and an audible dynamic alarm inside the vehicle.

Conquest International Corp. in Plainville, Kans., offers a C-Back ultrasonic back-up collision warning system. EchoMaster in Aiea, Hawaii, makes the EchoMaster Reverse Sensing System.

Websites of companies mentioned above are www.americandealerservices.net, www.americanroadproducts.com, www.conquestinc.com, www.donnelly.com, www.rostra.com, and www.sensetech.com. EchoMaster's site is www.parkingsensor.com.


Hyperthermia warnings

Compared to backing-up technology aids, there are fewer technologies to prevent children from becoming injured or dying in dangerously hot vehicles – and perhaps that is just as well. Janette Fennell, the co-founder and executive director of Kids 'n Cars, has reservations about technologies that might lull an adult into thinking that it is okay or safe to leave a child unattended in a vehicle, for any length of time.

A technology that could alert a driver to that mistake has been developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Its Child Presence Sensor system sends a signal via radio frequency to an alarm module on the driver's key ring if the driver moves too far away from the vehicle with a child still in a car seat.

Langley is now seeking to commercialize the technology. Barry Gibbens, technology commercialization project manager at Langley, says the center is reviewing three license applications for the Child Presence Sensor.

General Motors (GM) demonstrated a low-energy radar sensor technology last year that can detect the presence of an infant and sound the vehicle horn when heat rises to a dangerous level inside a car (see Inside ITS, June 1, 2001). A spokesperson for GM says the technology is still in development.

GM and Safe Kids, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the prevention of unintentional childhood injury, are conducting an education campaign this summer to prevent deaths due to hyperthermia. The theme is "Never Leave Your Child Alone."

See www.safekids.org and www.gmability.com. For information on NASA's Child Presence Sensor, enter reference number LAR-16324-1 and search under "Technology" at http://technology.nasa.gov, or contact Barry Gibbens at b.v.gibbens@larc.nasa.gov.


Market for back-up technologies

A.T. Kearney projects that the market for parking and blindspot technologies will grow to $963 million by 2008 and that the distance-based collision warning technology market will grow to well over $1 billion. A J.D. Power Internet survey of 10,000 consumers found that 72 percent would like to have external sensing aids on their next vehicle and would be willing to pay $300 for the technology (see Inside ITS, July 1, 2001).

James Cotter, the president of Sense Technologies, a vendor of a radar-based back-up aid, says his company is not in the position of introducing a new product to potential customers; rather, it is trying to demonstrate that its product is the best in class. "That illustrates that there is a gigantic market awareness and demand out there for this technology," he says.

His company is concentrating on dealerships and fleet sales at the moment. Safety-conscious "soccer moms" are natural customers for the Guardian Alert Backing Awareness System, he says, but so are companies with fleets. Such companies appreciate the return on investment of a technology that can prevent the costs associated with even one backing-up accident.

At one time, under previous management, Sense Technologies was interested in promoting a legislative agenda for its product. But Cotter says that now "the demand is way ahead of any legislative change that could promote this type of technology."

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