Preventing Backovers in America's Driveways

National Highway Transportation Safety Administration

1 Vehicle backover injuries and deaths occur when someone, without a driver’s knowledge or awareness, is positioned behind a vehicle as the driver is backing out of a driveway or other parking spot. Most victims of backovers are the elderly and children.

2 To add to the tragedy of backover injuries and deaths, the driver is often a neighbor or relative. When a child is the victim, the driver may even be the child’s mother or father.

3 Since most of these heartbreaking incidents occur in private driveways rather than on the road, they are not typically included in traffic-crash fatality data. Therefore, experts often don’t agree on the exact number of children injured or killed in backover incidents each year.

4 But even one child who dies from a backover incident is one too many. Awareness and understanding of the problem are the first steps toward reducing the risk of backover deaths.

All Vehicles Have Blind Spots

5 In the case of a backover incident, the blind spot is the place behind your vehicle that you cannot see in the rear or side view mirrors — or even by craning your neck out the driver’s side window. Generally speaking, the larger the vehicle, the larger the blind spot.

6 Blind spots for shorter drivers tend to be significantly larger as well. In addition, the elevation of the driver’s seat, the shape of a vehicle’s windows and mirrors, and the slope of a driveway can affect the size of the blind spot behind a vehicle. In addition, the smaller stature of children can make them particularly difficult for a driver to see when backing up.

What inference does the passage support regarding backover data?
Responses
A that the data presented so far is inconclusivethat the data presented so far is inconclusive
B that backovers make up a number of traffic-crash fatalitiesthat backovers make up a number of traffic-crash fatalities
C that more children are injured than are actually killed in these accidentsthat more children are injured than are actually killed in these accidents
D that backovers do not make up a significant number of traffic-crash fatalities