Alarming run of driveway deaths draws call for care

Most children who die in their driveways are killed by a parent, family members or a friend. Photo / Thinkstock

Reversing cameras help, say authorities, but toddler supervision is still a vital factor.

Police and road safety authorities have issued new warnings after the deaths of two toddlers in their driveways this week.

Both were killed by their parents in an alarming, and continuing series of similar accidents that has seen nine young children die, and two others seriously injured, since July last year.

In the latest, a 3-year-old boy had been standing with his father and 4-year-old brother in a laneway to an underground garage in their Sydney apartment when he was struck by a 4WD driven by his mother.

Studies have shown that most children who die in their driveways are killed by a parent, family members or a friend, most often by slow-moving large vehicles such as 4WDs, vans and trucks.

The drivers are usually unaware that children are dangerously close.

Often children dart suddenly and without warning into the path of the vehicle.

Road safety authorities say that new technology such as reversing cameras and sensors - increasingly being fitted as standard by vehicle manufacturers - could help reduce the toll.

But the New South Wales Motor Accidents Authority warned that technology can never replace close supervision.

Its research has shown that most victims are children under 3 - mainly boys - killed in early morning or late afternoon weekdays, often when drivers thought they were safe.

A study commissioned after the NSW parliament sought new strategies to reduce the toll said that two-thirds of all driveway accidents involved unsupervised children left in what was thought to be a safe place, but finding their way into a vehicle's path.

And while 4WDs and other large vehicles are involved in most accidents, officials warn that blind spots immediately behind family sedans, station wagons and vans are also potentially deadly.

In a world first the NSW motoring organisation NRMA devised a reversing safety rating system based on a five-star scale that has produced some surprising results.

It found that new SUVs are increasingly safe, with more than one-third - all fitted with reversing cameras or sensors - rating four or five stars.

This was a far higher proportion than for cars and people movers, with less than a quarter of large cars, and between 2 and 10 per cent of smaller vehicles, achieving a similar rating.

At the bottom of the scale a disturbing proportion of vehicles failed to reach even two stars: 80 per cent of medium-sized cars, more than 70 per cent of small-to-medium cars, 58 per cent of 4WDs, 54 per cent of large cars, and a quarter of small cars.

Faced with a continuing toll, police reinforced warnings that close supervision of young children remains vital.

They said children should be secured in a vehicle or placed in the care of an adult, parents should never assume someone else is looking after them, and reversing drivers needed to ensure a clear line of sight to their rear.

Parents should also make sure children do not use driveways as a playground, and if possible block access with security doors or fencing.