The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) along with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced new guidelines back in March with recommendations that children no longer rear face and also changed the details for kids in boosters.

New Rear-facing Recommendation: Parents are to keep children rear-facing until 2 years old, or until they reach the maximum height and weight for the seat as noted in the manual.

Two years is a goal easily met, considering even some of the lowest cost seats now rear-face until 40 pounds. When your baby outgrows their infant carrier, that is when you buy a convertible seat that rear-faces longer, not a forward-facing seat, which you can put upright up to 30 degrees when kids are bigger with better head control, often making them take up less space than infant seats.

New Boostering Recommendation: Children should ride in a belt-positioning booster (that means a high-back!) until they are at least 4 foot, 9 inches, AND 8-12 years old.

It’s best to keep children in their harnessed seat until they outgrow it, which is into elementary years with the height and weight of most convertible seats and even harness-to-booster seats these days. But they will outgrow it and go into a booster, and eventually they need to meet all points in a 5-point test before they’re ready to sit in a car’s seat without a booster of any kind. Remember that these belts are designed to fit an average adult. Best practice is also waiting until children are 80-100 pounds as well.

Beyond that, all kids need to stay out of the front until they’re at least 13 years old.

While 2 years or 8 years may now be the minimums, we don’t parent by minimums, do we? Buying a high quality (not necessarily high cost!) seat to start, after you do all your research to choose the best seat for your child, can easily help you meet these recommendations.

Make sure you’re using the car seats correctly, too. There’s a lot of intricacies for both harnessed seats and boosters.

New Car Seat Guidelines is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

On average, two children die and about 50 are injured every week when someone accidentally backs over them in a vehicle, according to KidsAndCars.org, a nonprofit group that pushed the government to track such tragedies. More than two-thirds of the time, a parent or other close relative was behind the wheel.

Now, auto safety regulators have decided to do something about it. Federal regulators plan to announce this week that automakers will be required to put rearview cameras in all passenger vehicles by 2014 to help drivers see what is behind them. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which proposed the mandate in late 2010, is expected to send a final version of the rule to Congress on Wednesday.

“We haven’t done anything else to protect pedestrians,” said Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety in Washington. “This is one thing we can do and should do.”

Regulators have predicted that adding the cameras and screens will cost the auto industry as much as $2.7 billion
a year, or $160 to $200 a vehicle. At least some of the cost is expected to be passed to consumers with higher prices.
But regulators say that 95 to 112 deaths and as many as 8,374 injuries could be avoided each year by eliminating the wide blind spot behind a vehicle. Government statistics indicate that 228 people of all ages — 44 percent of whom are younger than 5 — die every year in backover accidents involving passenger vehicles. About 17,000 people a year are injured in such accidents.

“In terms of absolute numbers of lives saved, it certainly isn’t the highest,” Ditlow said. “But in terms of emotional tragedy, backover deaths are some of the worst imaginable. When you have a parent that kills a child in an incident that’s utterly avoidable, they don’t ever forget it.”

Safety advocates said a mandatory camera is long overdue. “We wouldn’t buy a car if we couldn’t see 30 or 40 feet going forward,” said Janette Fennell, founder of KidsAndCars.org. “We’re taking this big lethal weapon, going in reverse, and we can’t see.”

Government set to require rearview cameras in cars is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

Used-car dealers may be selling cars and trucks that have been recalled but not repaired because manufacturers don’t send them the same recall notifications that are sent to franchised dealers, said a study by a government watchdog.

Even if used-car dealers or franchised dealers know of a recall, there is no requirement that they tell prospective buyers or make the repairs before a sale, said the Government Accountability Office study released Wednesday. Nor does the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration have the power to order dealers to make the repairs or to warn buyers.

The situation “could pose a significant risk to the safety of millions of vehicle drivers,” the study said.

Used-car buyers might not be told of auto recalls is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

Children should ride in rear-facing car seats until they are 2 years old instead of 1, according to updated advice from a medical group and a federal agency.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued separate but consistent recommendations.

Both organizations say older children who’ve outgrown front-facing car seats should ride in booster seats until the lap-shoulder belt fits them. Booster seats help position adult seat belts properly on children’s smaller frames. Children usually can graduate from a booster seat when their height reaches 4 feet 9 inches.

Children younger than 13 should ride in the back seat, guidelines from both groups say.

The advice may seem extreme to some parents, who might have trouble persuading kids as old as 12 to use booster seats.

But it’s based on evidence from crashes. For older children, poorly fitting seat belts can cause abdominal and spine injuries in a crash.

One-year-olds are five times less likely to be injured, in a crash if they are in a rear-facing car seat than a forward-facing seat, according to a 2007 analysis of five years of U. S. crash data.

Put another way, an estimated 1,000 children injured in forward-facing seats over 15 years might not have been hurt if they had been in a car seat facing the back, said Dr. Dennis Durbin, lead author of the recommendations.

Children should ride in rear-facing seats until age 2 is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

Kia Motors is recalling more than 70,000 Optima midsize sedans to fix transmission problems that can cause the cars to roll even while they’re in park.

The cars are from the 2006 through 2008 model years and were built from Sept. 29, 2005 to June 13, 2007.

Kia said that one some of the cars, a transmission shifter cable was installed incorrectly.

Kia recalling 70,000 Optimas over transmission problems is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

Under government pressure, Ford Motor Co. said Wednesday it, will recall nearly 150,000 F-150 pickup trucks to fix air bags that could deploy without warning.

The recall covers trucks from the 2005-2006 model years in the United States and Canada for what the auto company calls a “relatively low risk” of the air bag deploying inadvertently.

The recall, however, is much smaller in scope than what the government had requested. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, citing 77 injuries, told the company in a November 2010 memo that the recall should cover 1.3 million F-150 trucks from the 2004- 2006 model years.

The F-150 is the flagship of Ford’s popular F-Series pickup trucks, the best-selling vehicle in America. The government expanded its investigation into the air bag problems in January 2010.

A Transportation Department spokeswoman said the agency was currently reviewing Ford’s response to see if the recall was adequate. If the government determines that the recall is too limited, it could lead to a rare public hearing to decide whether Ford should expand its safety action.

NHTSA said in a Nov. 24 memo that it knew of 238 cases in which the air bags improperly deployed and noted that Ford made production changes to the trucks in 2006 and 2007 to fix the air bag wiring and other issues.

Government regulators said in the memo that Ford did not believe the issue “warrants any corrective action” because the number of reports and incidents were low, owners received “adequate warning” from the air bag warning light and the “resulting injuries are minor in nature.”

Ford spokesman Wes Sherwood said in a statement Wednesday that the recall covered trucks built at the Norfolk, Va., assembly plant from November 2004 through June 2005.

Sherwood said the majority of the complaints involved trucks built during the first shift of production at the Norfolk plant and the rates of air bags accidentally deploying were much higher in trucks built at the Virginia plant than those built at plants in Michigan and Missouri.

Ford said an air bag wire located in the steering wheel could have been improperly positioned so it would chafe, expose bare copper and create the possibility of a short circuit that would light up the airbag warning lamp.

Ford said most of the air bag issues happened within the first few seconds of the vehicle starting up and the company said it was aware of “one customer that jumped from the vehicle” after the air bag deployed while the truck was parked in a driveway.

The recall, which was first reported by the Detroit News, is expected to begin in early March. Owners will be notified and told to bring their truck to their dealer.

Ford recalls F-150s for faulty air bags is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

Government investigators and Toyota Motor Corporation have reportedly found that driver error, not sudden unintended acceleration, may have caused dozens, of accidents involving Toyota vehicles.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that a federal analysis of data from dozens of crashes blamed on sudden acceleration suggested that some drivers who lost control of their vehicles were mistakenly flooring the accelerator when they intended to hit the brakes.

Thousands of cases of unintended acceleration are being investigated by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, in conjunction with NASA.

Toyota Motor Corporation spokesman Mike Michels said “virtually all” of 2,000 cases of reported unintended acceleration the automaker has reviewed resulted from drivers stepping on the gas pedal instead of the brake.

NHTSA has received 3,000 reports of sudden acceleration in Toyota and Lexus automobiles, and Toyota has recalled 8.5 million vehicles worldwide to alter gas pedals that might stick or remove floor mats that in some cases have trapped gas pedals and made if impossible for drivers, to stop.

Toyota said that its investigations into the accidents have determined “a number of explanations or causes,” but insisted that “in no case have we found electronic throttle controls to be a cause.”

Many Toyota wrecks may be the result of footwork is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

With advocates for pedestrians and the blind warning that hybrid and electric cars could catch walkers unaware, the designers of the Nissan Leaf have added sound effects to the otherwise nearly silent vehicle.

After exploring a hundred sounds that ranged from chimes to motorlike to futuristic, the company settled on a soft whine that fluctuates in intensity with the car’s speed. When backing up, the car makes a clanging sound.
Nissan says it cooperated with advocates for the blind, a Hollywood sound design company and acoustic psychologists in creating its system of audible alerts.

“While silence is golden, it does present practical challenges,” a Nissan statement said. The Leaf is scheduled to go on sale in parts of the United States in December.

Nissan added the artificial noise as lawmakers and regulators study whether auto manufacturers should be required to install warning sounds in their hybrid or electric vehicles to alert pedestrians.

With more than 1.6 million hybrid vehicles on the road, and the number of electric cars expected to rise with the introduction of vehicles such as the Leaf, a number of safety advocates have warned of the dangers to pedestrians.

According to a study by the National High way Traffic Safety Administration last year, hybrid vehicles are twice as likely as conventional cars to be involved in a pedestrian crash in some low-speed situations.

Others have argued that adding sounds to cars works against decades of effort in which automakers strove to make vehicles that run quietly. Some electric car companies complained that silence is one of the main virtues of the battery-run cars.

Nissan’s sound system is the first created by a major manufacturer. The company says it is controlled through a computer and synthesizer in the dash panel. The sound is delivered through a speaker in the engine compartment. Though a switch inside the vehicle can turn off the sounds temporarily, the system automatically resets to “on” at the next ignition cycle.

At speeds greater than 20 mph, any car, electric or not, makes significant noise because of the tires interacting with the pavement, engineers say. The noises for the Nissan operate only at lower speeds.

Nissan brings the noise to electric car is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

General Motors Co. is recalling 1.53 million cars and trucks worldwide because fires can be ignited by components used for heating windshield washer fluid.

The company said Tuesday that it will disable the heating mechanism in the washers of Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, Hummer and Saturn brands from model years 2006 to 2009 and pay owners $100 for each vehicle because the feature won’t be available and the maker of the units is out of business.

Since Toyota Motor Corp. recalled more than 8 million vehicles worldwide this year for defects that may cause unintended acceleration, U.S. regulators have stepped up scrutiny of auto safety, and Congress is considering measures to tighten regulation of the industry.

GM’s heated windshield washer, which the company said was supplied by Micro-Heat Inc., was recalled in 2008 for repairs. The automaker received five reports of fires in the components in the past year, prompting Tuesday’s action, the company said.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had investigated a windshield wiper flaw before GM issued the 2008 recall.

The regulator in 2004 fined GM $1 million, at the time its largest civil penalty, to settle charges the company failed to conduct a timely recall of about 600,000 vehicles for wipers that stopped working or failed to turn on when needed.

Micro-Heat, which filed for bankruptcy in 2008 after GM stopped offering its Hotshot wiper-fluid heater, was based in Farmington Hills, Mich.

GM said in 2008 that Micro-Heat should bear the $19.2 million cost of recalling 944,000 cars and trucks for the earlier recall, according to court papers in the bankruptcy filing.

The recall includes 1,365,070 vehicles in the U.S., 98,794 in Canada, 26,228 in Mexico and 38,093 exported to other countries, GM said. Vehicles included in the U.S. recall are the Buick Enclave and Lucerne; Cadillac CTS, DTS, Escalade, Escalade ESV and Escalade Err; Chevrolet Avalanche, Silverado 3590, Suburban, Tahoe and Traverse; GMC Acadia, Sierra, Yukon and Yukon XL; Hummer H2; and Saturn Outlook.

GM to recall 1.5 million vehicles for windshield washer warmers is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas

Federal safety regulators are investigating a few reports of gas pedals becoming trapped by floor mats in 2010 Ford Fusions and Mercury Milans.

Officials with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said Tuesday that the agency opened a preliminary investigation last Friday after receiving three such complaints involving unsecured all-weather floor mats. There are no reports of crashes or injuries. Safety officials said the investigation covers about 250,000 Fusions and Milans.

A Ford spokesman, Said Deep, said the problem was attributable to drivers stacking all-weather mats on top of floor mats that come with the vehicle. Ford’s all-weather mats have warnings advising customers not to stack them and to secure them properly to the floor, Deep said.

US. agency looking into reports of trapped pedals in Ford cars is a post from: Accident & Injury Law in Texas