Kids and Car Safety’s Nontraffic Data Collection, Research and Analysis

Kids and Car Safety Publications & Studies

• Pediatric Heatstroke Fatalities Caused by Being Left in Motor Vehicles, Pediatric Emergency Care, 2020, Deborah L. Hammett, DO, Thomas M. Kennedy, MD, Steven M. Selbst, MD, Janette E. Fennell, BA, Amber Rollins, BSW and
• Unintentional non-traffic injury and fatal events: Threats to children in and around vehicles, Traffic Injury Prevention, October 31, 2017, Mark R. Zonfrillo, Mackenzie L. Ramsay, Janette E. Fennell, Amber Andreasen
• Trauma Center-Based Surveillance of Nontraffic Pedestrian Injury among California Children, Western Journal of Emergency Medicine Articles in Press, Department of Emergency Medicine, UC Irvine" Jan-12, 2012, Thomas M. Rice, MPH, PhD, Roger B. Trent, PhD, Janette Fennell, [...], and John Sherck, MD
• Injuries and Deaths Among Children Left Unattended in or Around Motor Vehicles-United States, July 2000-June 2001, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Volume 51, No. 26, July 5, 2002, [Significant Contributor]
• The Power of Survivor Advocacy: Making Car Trunks Escapable, Injury Prevention Journal, September 2000.
• Channeling Grief into Policy Change, Survivor Advocacy for Injury Prevention, Injury Prevention Newsletter, Volume 13, October 2000.
  
  

NHTSA Not-in-Traffic Surveillance

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is the agency directed by the Department of Transportation (DOT) to save lives, prevent injuries and reduce economic costs due to road traffic crashes, through education, research, safety standards and enforcement activity.  NHTSA has focused on motor vehicle and highway safety, but had never collected data about the interaction of vehicles and people when an incident takes place off of a public road or highway (nontraffic). 

After a decade of Kids and Car Safety (KACS) documenting nontraffic incidents, in 2005 and 2008 KACS was successful in initiating provisions passed by Congress requiring the NHTSA to begin collecting nontraffic data (​​SEC. 10305. NONTRAFFIC INCIDENT DATA COLLECTION. (SAFETEA-LU) PUBLIC LAW 109–59—AUG. 10, 2005 and 122 STAT. 641, Cameron Gulbransen Kids Transportation Safety Act of 2007).  KACS has changed the entire transportation data collection philosophy, process, and structure in this country. 

NHTSA’s Non-Traffic Surveillance (NTS, formerly NiTS) system has been troubled with inconsistencies, non-comparable time frames, changes in criteria and the reports have been issued sporadically. Terminology used makes the data difficult to understand. 

States are still not required to report nontraffic data to NHTSA. Estimates are derived from the ratio between nontraffic incidents and traffic incidents based on only 5 of the 50 states (Indiana, Kentucky, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina), which is not a reliable way to track this data. Needless to say, the NTS system has a lot of room for improvement. 

For example, NHTSA’s “Not in Traffic Surveillance (NiTS) 2007 – Children” report inaccurately stated an average of 19 child hot car deaths per year while KACS data confirms an average of 40 deaths per year during the same 2003-2004 time period .

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Non-Traffic Surveillance (NTS) system, an estimated 3,383 people were killed and 725,630 injured each year in nontraffic incidents based on the most recent estimates from their April 2024 and March 2015 reports listed below. (The estimate above includes both nontraffic “crash” and “non-crash” data from different time periods due to the lack of data available during the same time period for each type of nontraffic category.)