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PeterE
PostPosted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 18:33 
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http://www.leedstoday.net/ViewArticle2. ... ID=1584338

Quote:
Family's grief
By Mark Lavery

A family has been left devastated after a toddler was knocked down and killed by a car being driven by her aunt.

The harrowing incident happened as the woman slowly reversed her car from the front of a house in South Kirkby near Pontefract on Monday. She didn't know her niece, two-year-old Callie-Frances Bellis, was playing in front of the house when tragedy struck.

Callie-Frances suffered fatal head injuries after she was hit by the VW Passat outside the terrace house on Emily Street just after 5.30pm.

An inquest at Wakefield Coroner's Court yesterday heard how police and paramedics were alerted and Callie-Frances, of North Street, South Kirkby, was taken to Pinderfields Hospital, Wakefield, where she was certified dead at 6.45pm the same day.

Coroner's officer Colin Mantell told the court: "She was playing on the frontage of the house.

"Her aunt was slowly reversing her car off the frontage and she was apparently unaware of the child's presence."

West Yorkshire Coroner David Hinchliff said a post mortem examination had been carried out by Dr Alex Barr, a consultant histopathologist at Pinderfields Hospital.

The court heard Dr Barr's provisional report showed the cause of death to be a skull fracture and brain injury.

A full police investigation has been launched and a detailed report is to be handed to the coroner's office in due course.

The inquest was adjourned.

What a sad and tragic incident :(

But I've read that one-third of child pedestrian road fatalities result from reversing accidents.

Hopefully it won't be used as an excuse for humps/cameras/lower limit.

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botach
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 19:12 
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Horrific -- is the nearest i can get -

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Roger
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 20:32 
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Surely if 1/3 of child accidents occur through reversing, motor car manufacturers have a duty of care to provide some degree of visibility at road level immediately behind the car when reversing. This need be nothing more than a simple Fresnel lens at the top of the rear windscreen in most cases.
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malcolmw
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 20:40 
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I disagree.

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if 1/3 of child accidents occur through reversing


then parents should take more care to know where their children are playing.

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Roger
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 21:28 
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malcolmw wrote:
I disagree.

Quote:
if 1/3 of child accidents occur through reversing


then parents should take more care to know where their children are playing.

I agree parents should take more care. My contention stands too though. Is there any harm in the downward-facing mirror (or whatever) where practicable? I've seen such fitments on, of all things, campervans. Paul, does yours have one - and would it assist in preventing such tragedies in your opinion?
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johnsher
PostPosted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 23:03 
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PeterE wrote:
But I've read that one-third of child pedestrian road fatalities result from reversing accidents.

yes and, with regards to one of the other threads, large 4x4s are over-represented here.
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Ernest Marsh
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 08:38 
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The bakery next door to us have three bays with free standing signs on angle iron about three and a half feet high, saying reserved for customers.
They have been knocked down AND BROKEN 4 times in the last twelve months.
In many other cases it did not result in damage to the signs.
The worrying thing is they are stood on the PAVEMENT in front of the parking bays! :shock:

This Audi driver failed to see a stationary post office red van behind him... despite a warning toot on the horn from the postman, and reversed into it!!
Image

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Observer
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 10:29 
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Roger wrote:
Surely if 1/3 of child accidents occur through reversing, motor car manufacturers have a duty of care to provide some degree of visibility at road level immediately behind the car when reversing. This need be nothing more than a simple Fresnel lens at the top of the rear windscreen in most cases.


Please be careful how you use "duty of care". The expansion and proliferation of circumstances in which a person who has suffered loss or injury seeks to impute a duty of care owed by another party is, imo, substantially responsible for the growing blame culture, which in turn is eroding previous expectations of personal responsibility.
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Homer
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 20:56 
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malcolmw wrote:
Is there any harm in the downward-facing mirror (or whatever) where practicable? I've seen such fitments on, of all things, campervans. Paul, does yours have one - and would it assist in preventing such tragedies in your opinion?


A mirror would require the driver to be looking into it to spot any obstruction.

Parking sensors are pretty good at spotting the slightest obstruction these days and give an audible warning. They are becoming common on even basic spec models now.
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Twister
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 22:30 
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Homer wrote:
A mirror would require the driver to be looking into it to spot any obstruction.


Another problem with mirrors/lenses is that they can still suffer from a pretty large blindspot, particularly if the rear screen is angled considerably off the vertical, and made worse by any rearward extension of the bodywork (saloon bootlids, hatchbacks with stubby horizontal sections between the bottom of the rear screen and the vertical rear face of the tailgate etc.) into the sightlines of a mirror/lens mounted at the top of the rear screen.

Sketching out those sightlines on a side view of my Omega saloon suggests there's a 3.5m blind spot immediately behind the car where a rear screen mirror/lens would be unable to see the road surface... Even allowing for the fact that children (even little 'uns) aren't paper thin and would therefore have parts of their body at least a few inches above the road surface, I still reckon there's a good 2m or so where a small child would remain completely hidden if they were lying on the ground.

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SafeSpeed
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 00:42 
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Roger wrote:
Is there any harm in the downward-facing mirror (or whatever) where practicable?


Well, you do have to give up a bit of normal rear vision.

Roger wrote:
I've seen such fitments on, of all things, campervans. Paul, does yours have one - and would it assist in preventing such tragedies in your opinion?


Maybe, sometimes.

Personally I like to have fully observed the area I'm reversing over before I start. That maybe by seeing it while I'm driving forwards, or it maybe by walking round before I reverse.

I suppose that many people won't use such basic good practice and will benefit from a vision device.

I'd like to try a video mirror for reversing, but I never have.

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botach
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 20:55 
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After my initial horror ,and sympathy for the parents - one thing struck me - if it was aunty leaving - did parents not think it strange for child not to be around to wave to aunt - or for child to be missing.

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Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on
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sotonsteve
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 21:27 
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With all these safety features that modern cars are encouraged to have visibility is rapidly declining, and rearward visiblility in particular. Looking out the back of the next generation of my car is like looking through a letterbox in comparison; the window dimensions are smaller in both directions.
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