A new study reveals that requiring backup cameras in new vehicles has dramatically reduced the number of children hurt or killed by reversing cars.
Following the 2018 federal mandate that made backup cameras mandatory in new vehicles, cases of children severely injured by cars in reverse dropped by half, according to researchers. They’ll present their findings Saturday at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pediatrics in Denver.
The data also shows a significant 78% reduction in children killed by cars backing up, researchers discovered.
“Our study demonstrates an important association between the federal mandate in 2018 requiring all new vehicles be equipped with a backup camera, and the reduction in both rate and severity of pediatric backover trauma,” researcher Dr. Natalie Drucker, an assistant professor of pediatric surgery at UTHealth Houston, said in a news release.
Each year, backover crashes result in approximately 210 deaths and 15,000 injuries, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Children are particularly vulnerable in these accidents since they’re often too small to be visible in rearview mirrors.
To conduct the study, researchers examined data for children younger than 5 who were involved in backup accidents between 2011 and 2024.
Their research identified 71 children who received treatment at a pediatric trauma center, along with another 28 whose cases appeared in a list maintained by the advocacy group Kids and Car Safety.
Among the trauma center patients, 53 were involved in their accident before the mandate took effect, while 18 were injured afterward, researchers said.