Reversing car kills 2-year-old boy in driveway

A 2-year-old boy run over in a Wairoa driveway died despite his father's desperate dash to hospital.

The death yesterday left two families devastated, Sergeant Tony Bates of Wairoa said.

Mr Bates said a visitor had called at the Kopu Rd house about 6pm and drove up the driveway.

The toddler's father wandered over and chatted with the driver through the car window for about five minutes.

"Neither were aware the child was there. He had not been sighted by the father at any stage."

Mr Bates said that as the visitor reversed down the driveway the boy, who has not yet been named, was run over by the right front wheel.

The father rushed his critically injured son to Wairoa Hospital, but the boy died.

Mr Bates said it was the second incident he had been involved with in just over two years of a child being killed by a reversing car from a drive.

A 19-month-old toddler who had wandered on to the road in Somerville St, Wairoa, in November 2007, died after being struck by a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

New Zealand has one of the highest rates of driveway deaths in the world. Safekids director Ann Weaver has said that on average a child is taken to hospital every two weeks and about four are killed every year after being run over in driveways.

"It is the worst kind of accident that can happen to a family when someone close to the family kills or injures a child. We have to look at it as a bigger issue of making everyone aware that these situations happen."

A report in the New Zealand Medical Journal in 2002 identified driveway design as a contributing factor to accidents - sections are generally larger than in other countries so driveways are longer.

- APN