Senate Approves Schakowsky's Kids And Cars Safety Act

SENATE APPROVES SCHAKOWSKY'S
KIDS AND CARS SAFETY ACT

Washington, D.C.–Today, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky's (D-IL) Cameron Gulbransen Kids and Cars Safety Act, H.R. 1216. Schakowsky's bill, which passed the House unanimously last December, requires auto manufacturers to adopt simple, common-sense safety measures to decrease the number of deaths and injuries that have resulted from children being backed over, strangled by power windows or killed when they inadvertently shift a car into gear causing an accident. The bill now awaits the President's signature before it can become law.

"After years of working on this issue, I am so pleased that my bill will finally become law,... said U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL). "The passage of this bill is a testament to the advocacy of the victim's families who frequently came to Washington to share their tragic stories and to ask Congress to pass this legislation. This bill will make sure that no other family will ever have to experience the pain and loss they have had to endure. I cannot think of a better way to pay tribute to the thousands of children whose lives have been cut short by these horrible accidents. I only wish that we had been able to pass this legislation into law years ago....

The Kids and Cars Safety Act of 2007 directs the U.S. Secretary of Transportation to issue the following regulations to decrease the incidence of child injury and death:

• Provide drivers with a means of detecting the presence of a person or object behind their vehicle;
• Provide for the vehicle service brake to be engaged to prevent vehicles from unintentionally rolling away;
• Requires the government to study making power windows automatically reverse direction when they detect an obstruction to prevent children from being trapped, injured or killed and to report back to Congress if they don't conclude that such a mandate is necessary; and
• Establish a child safety information program to collect non-traffic incident data and disseminate information to parents about these hazards and ways to mitigate them.