What’s the Top Cause of Accidental Death for Children? CARS!
Here’s a guest post from Steve Gursten, a great child injury lawyer in Michigan. He writes about Michigan, but everything he says is true in Virginia. From infants to teenagers, motor vehicle accidents are the most frequent cause of injuries and accidental death.Injury lawyer gives 14 tips for protecting your kids in the car – let’s prevent auto accidents
The new teen driving law in Michigan is a move in the right direction for May’s “National Youth Traffic Safety Month.” During the month of May, the National Organizations for Youth Safety supports a number of projects to protect teen drivers and prevent car accidents. These include traffic safety education projects, supporting local law enforcement and promoting legislation to protect teen drivers (statistically, teen drivers are by age group, the most dangerous and the most likely to cause a car accident, followed by elderly drivers).
As Michigan personal injury lawyers who concentrate on helping people injured in car accidents, we want to stress the importance of Youth Traffic Safety Month. The following statistics are grim, but point to a tremendous need to tighten safety for teen drivers and children riding as passengers.
• The number one cause of accidental death for children ages 0-15 in Michigan is auto accidents.
• In 2008, car accidents and truck accidents in Michigan injured 5,094 children and killed 39.
• The danger is even greater for teens and young drivers: in 2008, car crashes killed 196 16-24-year-olds and injured 18,617.
• To put that in perspective, three out of five accidental deaths for 16- to- 24 year-olds are due to motor vehicle accidents.
– Source, Michigan Traffic Crash Facts, Michigan Office of Highway Safety Planning, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
How can we help to save lives? Here are14 tips for protecting young children in the car and teen drivers. I hope these safety tips will help us prevent car accidents and save lives.
1. Secure your infant under the age of 1 and less than 20 lbs in a rear-facing car seat in your car or truck’s back seat.
2. Deactivate the front passenger airbag if a rear-facing car seat must be secured in your car or truck’s front seat.
3. Secure your toddler (1 year or older and 20 lbs or more) in a forward-facing car seat in your vehicle’s back seat.
4. Secure children 4 to 7 years old and under 4 foot 9 inches in height in a booster seat in your car or truck’s back seat.
5. Make sure your child’s safety and booster seat is properly installed. Use the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Child Safety Seat Inspection Station Locator and find a certified technician who will inspect your child seat and show you how to correctly install it.
6. Ensure there have been no manufacturer recalls for your child safety or booster seat by consulting the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s “Child Restraint Recall Campaign Listing.” It lists all child restraint recalls from 1990 to present by manufacturer.
7. Children 8 to 16 years old (and older) or children who are taller than 4 feet 9 inches should wear a properly adjusted seat belt.
8. Model safe behavior for children riding in your car or truck by wearing your seat belt and avoiding distracted driving behaviors, such as talking on your cell phone while driving, texting while driving, etc.
9. Secure all children 12 years old and younger in the rear-seat of your vehicle to avoid potential injury from a deployed airbag, should a car accident occur.
10. Stay off the road if you’ve been drinking alcohol.
12. Refuse to allow children to ride in a vehicle driven by someone who has been drinking alcohol.
13. Drive within the speed limit.
14. Drive a safe car or truck. Consult the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s 5-Star Safety Rating system to discover the crash worthiness and rollover safety of your car or truck.
For more child safety tips and Michigan resources for your kids, order a free copy of Michigan Auto Law’s book – How to Keep Your Children Safe – Simple Steps to Protect Your Loved Ones From Hidden Dangers. This book is a compilation put together by the injury lawyers in my office and covers lessons from helping people who have lived with the injury or loss of a child.
- Steve Gursten is one of the nation’s top injury lawyers handling auto accident lawsuits. He is head of Michigan Auto Law and has received the highest verdict in the state for a car accident or truck accident victim in 2008, 2009 and 2010, according to Michigan Lawyers Weekly.
Daycare Providers Flying Under the (Regulatory) Radar
My friend Ken Levinson, is a great child safety advocacy lawyer in Chicago. He sent me a link to an article about a tragic case in Wisconsin in which a five-month-old baby suffocated while at an unlicensed facility. Landon Schultz’s parents needed a place for their baby to stay while they worked and chose an at-home daycare. They thought they could trust the woman who ran the daycare. Only after Landon died did they discover that she did not have a license and that she had too many children in her home.
According to Ken, the law creates a “systemic problem” and “invites abuse.” Because the daycare provider wanted to have more children than licensing allowed, “there is an incentive not to be licensed, [so the State will not] know you exist.”
Licensing of daycare facilities doesn’t guarantee your child will be safe, but at least with licensing you know that the State knows about the provider and there is an expectation that the daycare provider’s home is being inspected and the provider knows the rules and follows them. However, when the daycare is operating illegally, it is under the radar, and the State may not even know it exists.
This tragedy could easily have happened to Virginia parents. Licensing and regulation of home daycare providers doesn’t even come into play in Virginia until the home daycare center has six children. The home where Landon Schultz died in February in Wisconsin had four children for one adult. That ratio is acceptable in Virginia.
P.S. Parents of young children want to stay on top of safety issues, especially the unsafe products that have been recalled. Ken writes a very helpful blog, The Safest Line, that is devoted to keeping children safe. I suggest you subscribe to his blog to keep up to date on safety recalls and other great information for parents.
Sandra Talks to Teens About Social Networking & Cyberbullying
I recently volunteered to talk to teens at a local high school about social networking — especially Facebook — and cyberbullying. I love talking to teenagers. I get such insight into how they think and what’s on their minds.
It’s near the end of the school year, and kids are tired of school and their teachers and the kids who sit next to them in class. So, I was pleased when my “prepared” remarks didn’t last long, because the kids in all three classes asked great questions that went far beyond the announced topics. Unlike what others may say about the state of our youth, I found these teens to be interested in what’s going on in the news and in their community, and they were polite, even while slouching in their chairs.
I would say that my experience was excellent.
Hyperthemia Kills – And Summer Is Not Even Here, Yet
NEVER, EVER — EVEN FOR A MINUTE — LEAVE YOUR CHILD ALONE IN A CAR.
Summer 2011 has not even yet arrived, but a child has already died from hyperthermia. (Hyperthermia is the term for what happens when a body overheats and cannot regulate its temperature after being exposed to extreme heat.)
In August 2009, I posted a story about a child who died in a daycare van in Richmond, Virginia, when the driver forgot he was in the back and left him in the van all day. According to Safe Kids USA, 40 children died of hyperthermia in 2010, the largest number since records have been kept.
These may seem silly, but they are not. Here are some tips from Safe Kids USA for preventing hyperthermia:
- Dial 911 immediately if you see an unattended child in a car. EMS professionals are trained to determine if a child is in trouble.
- Never leave a child unattended in a vehicle, even with the window slightly open.
- Place a cell phone, smartphone, purse, briefcase, gym bag or whatever is to be carried from the car, on the floor in front of a child in a backseat. This triggers adults to see children when they open the rear door and reach for their belongings.
- Set your cell phone or Blackberry reminder to be sure you dropped your child off at day care.
- Set your computer calendar program, such as Outlook, to ask, “Did you drop off at daycare today?”
- Have a plan that if your child is late for daycare that you will be called within a few minutes. Be especially careful if you change your routine for dropping off little kids at day care.
- Teach children not to play in any vehicle.
- Lock all vehicle doors and trunk after everyone has exited the vehicle – especially at home. Keep keys out of children’s reach. Cars are not playgrounds or babysitters.
- Check vehicles and trunks FIRST if a child goes missing.
You think you don’t need these tips and such a thing would NEVER happen to you? Sadly, a child was found dead in a car in March in Texas when her mother forgot she was in the back seat and left her in the car all day.
Public Service Announcement – Kids and Cars and Heat
Here’s a link to a public service announcement produced by KidsandCars.org 
about how little time it can take for a child to die in an overheated car. It’s hard to watch – which is why it’s so important that you watch it.
Heat + Child Left in Daycare Van = Tragedy
I wrote some information here and here about what to look for when evaluating a daycare center. But, I left something important off those lists.
If you need a daycare provider to pick your child up and take her to the facility, you must make sure that it has a system THAT IT ACTUALLY USES for assuring that all children who were picked up have been taken out of the van and brought into the center.
Last year, 49 children died in the United States from hyperthermia (overheating) after being left in cars and vans, some of them by daycare centers (including at least one in Virginia). Every daycare center should have an ironclad system to make absolutely sure that every child who was put into the van is taken out of the van as soon as they arrive at their destination.
LOOKING AT A DAYCARE CENTER FOR YOUR CHILD? HOW MANY OF THESE SYSTEMS DOES THE CENTER USE?
- It does a headcount when the van arrives at the center and sees that all children are accounted for
- It does other headcounts during the day to make sure all children who are expected to be there are there
- If a child who is expected is not there, it calls the parents to find out why
ASK TO SEE THESE DOCUMENTS:
- The forms that must be filled out by the driver(s) of the van – who they pick up and who they take off the van
- The written procedures for making sure the children who are expected to arrive do actually arrive in their rooms
- Whatever process is used to make sure the forms are filled out and the procedures followed
When you ask for this information, the proper response should not be, “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” There should be a large stack of forms that the center has been using for some time to make sure the children in its charge have been transported safely. (Of course, personal information should be blacked out before you see the forms, but they should be there for you to see.)
There absolutely must be an ironclad policy with the childcare provider that, if your child unexpectedly doesn’t show up to daycare, someone from the staff will contact you immediately. There are not many times I use the words “ironclad” and “absolutely”, but this is one of them.
Sure, it’s hard running a daycare center. I don’t care how many employees don’t show up for work or how many other emergencies have happened, this is an absolute. The unexpected happens. But, there is no excuse for a daycare provider’s letting a child sit, trapped, in a van all day and die. None. Zero.
Your child should never be left on the daycare van. If you or someone you know needs to speak to a Virginia child injury lawyer about daycare neglect, call Sandra Rohrstaff at 703-260-6070, or send an email to Sandra@RohrstaffLaw.com, or contact her through the website, www.RohrstaffLaw.com. She can help.
Virginia Schools Have Responsibilities for Bullying
Virginia laws requires schools in Virginia to establish and enforce policies to protect our children from bullies and to deal with the bullies when they attack our children. The library of our firm’s website lists these sections of the Virginia Code about bullying:
1. This section requires every school board in Virginia to establish anti-bullying policies.
2. This section protects teachers and other volunteers when they report alleged bullying when they follow proper procedures. That is, the alleged bully cannot sue the teachers and volunteers who report the bullying if the teacher/volunteer acted in good faith and reported properly.
3. This section confirms that the anti-bullying rules apply to cyber-bullying.
4. This section bans hazing, a criminal offense.
If your child has experienced bullying, report it immediately to the proper school personnel and, if the bullying involved physical contact (pushing, shoving, tripping, hitting, etc.), file a complaint with the police.
If you do not get a satisfactory response from the school system, consult a child injury lawyer who can give you information, advice and assistance.
Smart Moms “LRN the Lingo” of Their Teens’ Texting
I was having coffee this morning with a mom of young teens. Her sons both have cell phones. She’s a smart mom. She didn’t just hand over the phones. Her sons earned the right to have the phones by having consistently great grades. There are family rules for phone use, too, such as:
Having a cell phone is a privilege not a right, and I can revoke the privilege.
I can pick it up and look at your text messages any time I choose.
If you password protect it, I must know the password.
After her younger son got his phone, she picked it up and looked at the messages, but she couldn’t understand what they were about. Why? Because her son and his friends were using a different language — Text Lingo. (I don’t really know what kids call the shorthand language they use for texting each other; I just named it Text Lingo.)
She said she asked her son what some of it meant, and he told her. Well, he told her SOMEthing. If the phrase “IWSN” had been in the text, do you think he’d have told her that?
In any event, I gave the mom the link to the LRNTheLingo app that I blogged about here (and the meaning of IWSN is revealed). Maybe that app will help her keep up with what’s going on in her sons’ texting world.
Obamas Shine Spotlight on Bullies
We’ve all read the headlines and ongoing stories of bullying and its effects on the victims. A number of television programs have featured segments about bullying, including this recent one on the Today Show.
Tragically, teens in Virginia and elsewhere have been so desperate to escape the threats and pain inflicted by the bullies that they have taken their own lives.
President and Mrs. Obama today announced that they are hosting a meeting at the White House on Thursday, March 11, 2011, to talk with teachers, students and parents about how to stop bullying and the responsibility that each of us has to make sure our children treat each other with respect.
The link to the video announcement on the StopBullying.gov Facebook page is here.
In the video, President Obama says, “For a long time bullying was treated as an unavoidable part of growing up, but more and more we are seeing how harmful it can be for our kids – especially when it follows them from their school to their phone to their computer screen.”
President Obama’s remarks about the bullies following children from “their school to their phone to their computer screen” is an acknowledgement that bullies now have more sinister ways to torment their victims than in the past. It’s no longer just a fear of being beat up or teased at school. Bullies can now follow their victims wherever they are, 24/7.
I have posted several blogs about bullying in the past.
Bullies have succeeded in the past by inflicting fear upon and demanding secrecy from their victims. Perhaps President and Mrs. Obama are helping to take those weapons away from the bullies. I hope their shining the bright spotlight of their influence onto bullies everywhere will make a difference in the lives of our children.
Burns Hurt!
Burns hurt! And, burns REALLY hurt a young child.
A few years ago, I represented the family of a two-year-old boy who died from the infection he got after suffering scalding burns over much of his body when boiling water on the stove fell on him. (The injury was especially devastating to the boy’s parents. He had come running into the kitchen and startled his dad who was standing by the stove. T
he dad turned abruptly and knocked the pot off the stove. The boiling hot water splashed onto the boy.)
A young child’s skin is thinner than an older child or adult’s. So, a young child can be burned at a lower temperature and the burn can go deeper into the skin and inner tissues. The majority of people who suffer burns from scalding liquid are younger than four years of age.
Check your own kitchen and the routines of your family. Do your young children usually come into the kitchen and stand close to the stove when you are cooking? Kitchens and bathrooms are two of the most dangerous rooms in your house for young children. Here is a link to tips for keeping your child safe around the house.
If your child is in home daycare, be sure the daycare provider does not allow the children to be in the kitchen if there is cooking going on.
Young children do not understand the dangers and cannot control their actions. That is why the law does not fault young children for their injuries. In Virginia, if your young child suffers a burn injury, it is never her fault.
If you have questions about whether your should consider holding someone else responsible for your child’s burn injury, contact an experienced child injury lawyer.
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