The Price of Preventing Back-Over Deaths

One Sunday morning last April, Karen Pauly, a 33-year-old teacher from DeWitt, Iowa, climbed into her SUV to run some errands. As she backed out of the garage, Pauly felt a bump. She jumped out of the car and screamed when she saw her 19-month-old son, Jack, who had wandered out of the house, lying on the driveway. The boy died hours later. “Everybody thinks it can’t happen to them, but now I know it can,” says Pauly.

Each year, about 292 people die and 18,000 are injured in back-over accidents, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. By yearend the agency is expected to issue a regulation requiring rear-view cameras on all new automobiles sold in the U.S. starting in 2014. NHTSA says the cameras will cut the number of deaths by half, to 146 a year. Yet the auto industry is questioning the prospective rule, calling it an example of overregulation by the federal government. NHTSA estimates it will cost automakers as much as $2.7 billion to install the devices on 16 million cars every year, which works out to about $18.5 million per life saved.