13 May 2011
Reverse Cameras Can Prevent Driveway Fatalities
According to Kidsafe Victoria, at least one child suffers from a vehicle-related injury each week in Australia. That may not sound strange to hear, but what’s shocking about the news is that the majority of these accidents occur in the driveway of the child’s own home. 9 out of 10 of these cases involve a parent, relative or friend, leaving the family stunned and devastated over having killed one of their own members.
Younger children are the victims of the majority of driveway accidents, around 1/4 of whom suffer from permanent and severe injury or death.
Kids under the age of five are naturally inquisitive. They are also small enough that they may not easily be seen in a vehicle’s rear vision mirror. It only takes a short moment for them to move into harm’s way. Take the case of 19-month-old Dhiyan Gahir, who was tragically crushed under the wheels of his father’s 4WD. His grandmother had put him down for just a second to help his brother tie his shoelaces. Gahir was innocently crawling after a toy when his father moved forward out of the carport, running over his young child.
According to Kidsafe, the majority of vehicles involved in driveway accidents are utes, 4WDs, trucks and vans. These accidents often occur while the vehicle is in reverse. It’s hard not to imagine why. Compared to many standard sized cars, those vehicles have much larger blind spots and smaller fields of vision.
The US has proposed to make it compulsory for all new vehicles manufactured after 2014 to be equipped with reverse cameras. Australia has yet to follow the US’s lead, but there is a growing outcry for mandatory reverse cameras as more and more tragic driveway fatality cases emerge.
Of course, there are those who argue that reverse cameras are unnecessary. Firstly, there are some who agree that vehicles like 4WDs have larger blind spots, but argue that accidents only occur because drivers are watching their rear mirrors instead of physically turning around to look out the back window. Turning and looking out the back window does increase the field of vision, but it doesn’t help when the child is so small that he or she can only been seen several meters away from the back tyre. Just watch this video of an experiment conducted in America:
You can clearly see the first driver doing a thorough over-the-shoulder headcheck, and yet because the cones were so close to her vehicle, she was still unable to see them. It isn’t hard to imagine a child crawling close to the back tyre of a vehicle either. After all, if all children approached vehicles from meters away, a lot less driveway fatalities would occur.
There are some who argue that many modern vehicles already have the necessary safety equipment. For example, many vehicles now have reversing beeper sensors which tell the driver how far away they are from an obstacle. Many school buses, vans and trucks also beep to warn pedestrians that they’re reversing. However, as seen from the video, beeper sensors are unable to detect things which are too small. Pedestrian beeper warnings are useful to those who are old enough to understand road safety, but aren’t good enough for kids who are barely even old enough to speak.
Some driving veterans argue that mandating reverse cameras will drive up the price of vehicles. This is a high price to pay for the result of driving ‘inexperience’. Indeed, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of America admits that of all the possible solutions, video backup systems are:
“… the most expensive single technology. When installed in a vehicle without any existing visual display screen, rearview video systems are currently estimated to cost consumers between $159 and $203 per vehicle, depending on the location of the display and the angular width of the lens. For a vehicle that already has a suitable visual display, such as one found in route navigation systems, the incremental cost of such a system is estimated to be $58 – $88, depending on the angular width of the lens.”
Granted, $200 is a hefty price to pay. However, it shies in comparison to the thousands of dollars in hospital bills and aftercare, especially if the child becomes severely physically or mentally handicapped. And $200 is nothing when compared to the guilt and emotional trauma of accidentally killing a child.
Finally, some dissidents of the use of reverse cameras claim that electronic devices still pale in comparison to good old common sense. Reverse cameras may break or stop working, whereas getting out of the car and looking behind it before reversing cannot possibly fail. It is true that electronic devices do sometimes fail. According to SquareTrade, the average new electronics device has a 15% chance of failure in its first 3-4 years. However, this ignores the 85% of devices which do work. Additionally, any chance of failure can easily be eliminated by ensuring that the camera’s supplier provides a warranty which covers as long a time as possible.
We at Elinz Electronics are obviously advocates of using reverse cameras, but we’d like to know what you think. Can driveway tragedies be avoided by using reverse cameras? If so, should it be mandatory for reverse cameras to be installed into all larger vehicles? Comment and tell us your opinion.
(Elinz Electronics is an online retailer of a wide variety of vehicular electronic devices, including reverse cameras. For a small sample of what we have to offer):
3.5" monitor with CMOS reverse camera
3.5" monitor with CMOS reverse camera
