Children in and around cars

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) began looking into the safety of children in and around cars after it was approached by the family of a toddler who was killed when he was struck by a car on the driveway in 2007.

Between the ages of one and two years, an infant’s mobility increases at a terrific, but irregular rate, so they can easily escape a parent’s supervision for a short time and get into difficulties before the parent realises they have moved. It is not until the age of four or five that children begin to understand the concept of danger, and begin to heed warnings given to them.

While most accidents involving children and cars occur when a child is travelling in a car that crashes, or is hit by a car as a pedestrian or cyclist, there are also cases where children are injured, and sometimes killed, when they are in or around a car, but not in a road accident. These tragic cases usually involve a vehicle reversing over a child on a driveway or a child being injured by something inside the vehicle, such as an electric window.

Working with Iains Trust (www.iains-trust.org), RoSPA conducted an online survey to gather further information from parents, carers, guardians, grandparents, friends and relatives of under-sevens, about incidents involving children on driveways. It included questions about times when children have followed adults on to a driveway without the adults realising and when vehicles have been manoeuvred on driveways, with drivers unaware that children were close by. It also addressed in-car child safety, asking whether children had ever been left alone in vehicles and whether children had ever got hold of the car keys without adults knowing.

The purpose of the survey was to gain a better understanding of the size of this problem, and how such incidents happen, in order to raise awareness of the hidden risks posed to children by cars, particularly on driveways, and to develop the advice to help parents and carers keep young children safe in and around cars at home.

Analysis of the results found that the majority of parents who responded were unaware of the potential for an accident involving their children and a car at home. One of the main issues identified was that parents and carers do not think an accident will happen to their family, unless they know someone who has already experienced one, meaning they do not take simple precautions.