Number of children run over causes concern

Press, 24 April 1984, Page 2

Number of children run over causes concern

PA Auckland A sudden increase in the number of toddlers run over and killed in their family’s own drivwway has alarmed traffic officers and the Plunket Society. Three young children have died that way already this month, bringing this year’s total to four, twice the yearly average. The Ministry of Transport’s deputy chief traffic superintendent, Mr Henry Gore, finds the sudden increase “quite horrifying.” He said drivers needed to be extra careful before moving their car, particularly if there was a chance that small children could be crawling about.

Because children were small enough to be concealed by the blind spot

at the back of a car, sometimes the only safe way to check was to get out and walk round.

He said the modern way of life was partly to blame. People were in such a hurry that they often overlooked simple precautions. The Plunket Society’s director of medical services in Auckland, Dr lan Hassell, said a lot of thought had been put into ideas to help prevent youngsters being run over at their own home.

Some, like a German scientist’s mirror system which gave all-round vehicle vision, were impractical. About the most successful preventive measure parents could take was to fence off their house or section so that the driveway was not

an accepted part of a young child’s play area. The. best way to stop children being run over in the drive was to make sure they were not there in the first place, Dr Hassell said.

The latest death occurred in the Auckland suburb of Manurewa last Thursday when a girl, aged two, was hit by a car reversing up a driveway. A boy, aged 16 months, died the same way in another .Auckland suburb on April 16 and a week before that a boy, aged one, was killed in Hastings. The first such accident this year was of a boy, aged 16 months, at Masterton on January 19.