Every year thousand of children and adults are injured and scores are killed as a result of vehicles backing into these victims. Most back up accidents involve children under the age of 5 and elderly persons over 60 yrs. of age. These backing up deaths occur in SUVs, passenger cars, trucks and commercial trucks as well. In 1998 the backup deaths associated with the different vehicle types are as follows:

Of the 91 back up deaths listed above, 21 occurred in the driveway of a person's home, another 21 occurred in or at the area of the home, 21 occurred in a parking lot (school, shopping mall or business area), 13 occurred in the street while a vehicle was backing up, 2 occurred over a sidewalk and lastly 13 occurred in an off road area (field, yard, woods, park, etc).

Death certificate research and an examination of other sources confirm that the annual number of deaths resulting from vehicles backing up is small in comparison to deaths due to other types of vehicle crashes. In spite of these relatively small numbers, there are certain characteristics of these incidents that emerged from both the original research conducted for this report and in academic research examined.

 Very young children, particularly those between one and four years of age, seem especially vulnerable to being killed by a vehicle backing up. Off-road locations, such as driveways and parking lots, are common locations where backing incidents occur. The drivers of vehicles involved in these types of incidents are often parents, relatives or other people, such as neighbors, known to the family of the children involved. Larger vehicles for personal use, such as SUVs, van and pickup trucks, are often the vehicles involved in these types of  backing up accidents / incidents and especially as the popularity and mammoth size of these vehicles increase, so will the death rates of children. 

USE OF BACK UP SENSORS & ALARMS WITH BACKUP CAMERAS (REARVIEW CAMERAS)

A back up sensor activates automatically once the car goes into reverse gear. Some back up warning systems informs the driver  when the rear of the bumper is at the distance of between 6 ft to 0.0 ft away from the obstacle, object or child, while giving 3+ different kind of beeping tones at the same time when each stage of distance is reached.  A back up alarm however does not distinguish distances, or warning of even the existence of a child behind the vehicle, this backing up device, only produces an audible alarm while the vehicle has been placed into reverse.