New
U.S. government data shows that vehicle airbags are killing fewer children than
they did five years ago, while safety experts give most of the credit to parents
who are keeping children 12 years old and under out of the front seat, the New
York Times (NYT) reported.
Citing the National Safety Council, the NYT said that passenger-side airbags
were in about 22 million vehicles in 1996 and they killed 35 children. Airbag
use was growing along with fears of more deaths.
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Council spokesman Chuck Hurley told the NYT that more than a million cars with
passenger-side airbags were being put on the road each month and the number
of child deaths was projected to double annually “until we were killing
several hundred children a year with a federally mandated safety device.”
But the NYT said that in 2000, even though the number of cars equipped with
passenger-side airbags had tripled, the number of children killed by them fell
to about 18. Some of those deaths are still under investigation and the cause
has not been confirmed.
The NYT said that a report due to be released by the council today says that
for adults and children together, the rate of air-bag deaths -the number of
deaths per million airbags in cars – is down 80 percent, child deaths are down
90 percent and deaths of drivers are down 60 percent.
The NYT said that new studies show that many parents now understand that they
can keep children safer in cars by putting them in a rear seat.
Design changes have resulted in a decrease in the explosive force of the bags
in newer vehicles yet preliminary studies suggest that the newer bags are just
as effective as the older airbags in saving lives, the NYT added.
The NYT said that a public awareness campaign financed by insurance companies,
car makers and car components companies spent $US37 million to promote the use
of seat belts and moving children to the back seat.
Deaths were widely publicised, and several lawsuits led to large damage awards
to families of children killed by airbags, the NYT said.
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