Protecting kids from ‘frontovers’ and ‘backovers’

Sue Auriemma was backing her SUV out of her driveway one day in May 2005 when her 3- year-old daughter ran out of the house and into the path of the vehicle. They were lucky: the girl’s injuries were not life-threatening. “But suffice it to say, that changed the direction of my life,” Auriemma said.

Auriemma is now vice president of Kids and Car Safety, a volunteer-run nonprofit dedicated to protecting children from vehicle-related risks. As the featured speaker on the October WalkMassachusetts Network call, she described how that close call turned her into an advocate, and how the stories of families like hers – and less fortunate ones – have helped make cars safer.

While WalkMassachusetts and other advocates focus mainly on public infrastructure, Kids and Car Safety focuses on “nontraffic incidents,” mainly in private driveways and parking lots: from cars striking children at low speeds, to kids or pets left in hot cars or unwittingly abducted by car thieves. Kids and Car Safety does research and analysis, raises public awareness, and promotes
policy change. One of its biggest victories, which Auriemma was closely involved in, was a requirement that, as of May 2018, all new vehicles in the U.S. must have a rearview camera as standard equipment.

Prior to that mandate, at least 60 children were struck in a “backover” every week, and two died, she said. (In Massachusetts, the group’s database shows, at least 10 children, aged 15 months to 4 years, were killed in backovers from 1994 to 2018.) Now, even with many older, camera-less vehicles still on the roads, such incidents appear to have declined by up to 70 percent.

It was common sense, Auriemma said: “You can’t avoid hitting what you can’t see.” The key now, she said, is to continue to educate drivers to use both their cameras and mirrors. Ending “frontovers,” which are just as deadly, is trickier, but design changes and public awareness can also help.

The growing size of the typical American vehicle is a key part of the problem, Auriemma noted. Over 80% of new vehicles sold in the U.S. in 2023–2025 were SUVs and light trucks, dealership data show.

“Definitely, big vehicles are not friends to child pedestrians,” she said. They can have blind zones of up to 15 feet in the front and up to 50 feet in the back, she noted – though some smaller cars, such as convertibles, can have bad visibility as well.

In the follow-up discussion, Auriemma was asked whether, given how dangerous large vehicles are to children outside them, she encourages parents to choose smaller cars. “It’s not something that we’ve advocated,” she replied, adding that parents like the structural strength of SUVs, as well as the space and convenience they provide. “It would be hard to convince moms to give up their SUVs.”

Brendan Kearney, executive director of WalkMassachusetts, noted that there has been a push not to give cars a 4- or 5-star safety rating if they are dangerous to people outside them, as a way of “ensuring that consumers get all the information about the safety of their vehicle.”

Another issue that drew further discussion was Auriemma’s multiple caveats about her data. To quantify nontraffic incidents, she said, Kids and Car Safety collects data from hospital records and media reports, and it has successfully pushed for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to start collecting data, but only for a few states. Still, there are such big gaps that “whenever we talk about our data, we start with the words ‘at least’ – it’s what we know of.”

Several participants agreed that much remains to be done to improve crash data. Advocate Tracy Zafian, one of this year’s Golden Shoe Award recipients, noted how wheelchair users, for example, are not counted as “pedestrians,” but rather as users of “mobility devices,” belying their vulnerability.

Blogpost by Marion Davis. Marion is a policy communicator focused on climate and energy, sustainable urban development, migration, and social justice. They serve as Development & Communications Co-Chair for WalkMass.