Florida Child Injury Law Blog

Archive for August, 2011

 Studies have shown buses are the safest way for children to get to school. But due to funding cuts, some Florida school districts are limiting the number of students who will be able to rely on bus transportation this year.

Nearly 400 of Lake Minneola High School’s 1400 students will be ineligible for bus service because they live within two miles of the school.

More than 70,000 students In Orange and Seminole counties and 7,000 in Lake County are ineligible for bus transportation because of a two-mile limit.

Orange County Public Schools has cut about $9 million from its transportation budget over the past two years and is reducing about 15 of its routes.

In Seminole County, the district is combining routes for budgetary reasons, forcing some students to walk farther to get to bus stops.

Volusia County will no longer transport about 800 students taking advanced or specialized classes to campuses outside their school zones, saving the district about $300,000.

With more students walking longer distances, having to cross more busy roads, and walking on shoulders without sidewalks, more pedestrian accidents involving a child are inevitable.  Other students who once relied on school bus transportation will be arriving at school by car, increasing traffic and creating further risk of injuries from car accidents as well as pedestrian accidents.

Parents are understandably concerned.  With financial resources severely strained, school districts need to make cuts somewhere. But is saving money worth the risk of having a school child hit by a car and suffering serious injuries?

If your child has been hit by a car or injured in an accident, it is important to contact a pedestrian accident attorney as soon as possible to assess the case, as the child may have a claim for damages.  Clearwater pedestrian injury attorney Jim Dodson has been representing accident victims for 25 years and offers a unique No Fee for Kids program. Read more at http://www.jwdodsonlaw.com/library/no-fee-for-kids-jim-dodson-law.cfm .

Imagine this scenario: In a pleasant subdivision in Florida, where everyone knows everyone else and people feel secure allowing their kids to play outside with friends, the neighborhood kids, ranging from five and up, all seem to be having fun. One of the younger children tries the door to her mother’s car, parked in the driveway. It is unlocked, so she climbs in and starts playing around with the controls.  There is no key in the ignition, and the parking brake is on.  She leans her head out the window to wave at her older brother, and in doing so presses on the automatic window button. The window begins to rise.  She can’t stop it, and in seconds, her neck is trapped.  She tries to call for help, but can’t get enough breath to speak, and so she groans.  The other kids laugh, thinking she’s just fooling around, pretending.  Within minutes, she’s dead.

Does this seem farfetched? It isn’t. Injuries and deaths from power windows are not uncommon. The story above is true. Since 1990 over 50 children have been killed by power windows, and the number of child injuries caused by these windows is in the thousands—serious injuries, including traumatic brain injuries and amputations of fingers—and most  of the victims are three years old and younger.

How could this terrible tragedy have been prevented?  What if the automatic windows in the car had reversed when coming into contact with the child, much the way elevator doors do if they close on someone? 

Consider these facts about automatic reversal technology:

• ARS technology would only cost around $6 per car window. 
• Eight out of ten new vehicles sold in Europe and most American cars sold overseas include ARS technology, but fewer than half of the vehicles produced by major US automakers and sold in the United States have this technology.

 In 2009, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration conducted a study aimed at deciding if they should require automatic reversing systems (ARS) technology in cars manufactured or sold in the United States. NHTSA decided ARS is not necessary. At the time, the information now available had not been completely assembled.

 Not necessary? If even one child injury or death is caused by a power window, we contend that preventing this unnecessary harm is absolutely necessary.  And one might ask how it is that European children deserve this protection more than our own.  Who among us would be unwilling to pay an additional $24 when buying a car to assure that our nation’s children are safe from these devastating injuries?

We keep our little ones safely ensconced in the back seat of the car, belted and padded, out of harm’s way. But what happens if while a busy mom is running errands, dashing here and there, with so many things on her mind, the child in that nice, safe seat falls asleep? And the unthinkable happens—Mom, distracted, gets out of the car and forgets the sleeping child in the back. The closed car becomes an oven. As the sun shines through the glass, the greenhouse effect pushes the temperature higher and higher. Hyperthermia—heatstroke—sets in, and the result is death.

“What kind of parent allows such a thing to happen?” you ask. Tragically, the answer is good parents, according to a University of South Florida professor of neuroscience, the St. Petersburg Times reported in a July 29^th article. David Diamond studied 50 of the cases of child death from hyperthermia as a result of being left in cars, and in every case, he found that otherwise good parents experiencing a combination of sleep deprivation, stress, and change in routine had suffered a memory lapse.

Children here in Florida are at a greater risk because of our intense summer heat. Children should never be left in cars, even for a moment. KidsAndCars.org, an organization dedicated to preventing child injury and death in cars, suggests that when you first get in, put something you absolutely must have—like your purse—on the back seat next to the child, to avoid forgetting to take your child with you.

Our child injury blog includes this very difficult subject to raise public awareness and because we are committed to keeping children safe. One child injury or one child death is one too many.

The first day of the new school year is rapidly approaching, and parents will soon be congregating at their neighborhood bus stops and loading their kids on board the big yellow buses. As they watch their little ones pile into their seats and wave goodbye from the windows, many parents who conscientiously insist that their kids buckle up in the family car wonder why the buses have no seat belts. They are, after all, carrying precious cargo.

The issue of seat belts on our nation’s buses has not gone unconsidered. In 2002, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) reported to Congress that the costs and drawbacks of requiring seat belts in school buses would outweigh any potential benefit of requiring children to wearing belts.

The Transportation Research Board says what parents need to know is that children are much safer on school buses than in the family car. Eight times safer, in fact, their studies show. At work to protect children aboard school buses is an integrated engineering design called “compartmentalization,” which provides a passive restraint system, very much like the way eggs in a carton are protected from breaking. Heavily padded and high-backed seats are placed close together and are firmly anchored in place, so in the event of a crash, they absorb the impact, preventing injury to the children.

We all know that accidents can happen at any time and to any one. But hopefully, this information can help put parents  minds at ease that children are safe riding on the school bus.