by Marcus Washington
NASHVILLE, Tenn.- A tragic driveway accident took the life of Nashville Mayor Dean's two-year-old niece. Now local doctors have offered tips to parents on how to prevent accidents like these.
Every week in the United States 50 children are backed over by a vehicle, on average two of those children die, but doctors say there are things parents can do to keep that from happening.
"It is a very unfortunate thing that happened and unfortunately it does occur quite often," said Dr. Karen Younghale.
Dr. Younghale works as an emergency medical physician at Centennial Medical Center. She says each year a large number of children are either hurt or killed when an unknowing driver backs over them.
"Some of the children when they are in their younger years, they don't have a sense of safety and that they can be severely injured," she said.
Statistics show majority of the victims in these kind of accidents are younger than two-years-old. Dr. Younghale says there are some things that everyone can do to protect the children.
"If you know you are going to be driving out and you know your child is playing out in the yard, have whoever is staying home with the child, make sure they see the child and know where they're at before there is any vehicle going out the driveway."
A small child is hard to see behind or in front of a vehicle. Most objects cannot be seen under 8 feet in front of a vehicle and anything under 50 feet behind your car- is virtually invisible.
"In certain vehicles, depending on if it's a SUV or something larger, you are not going to see a smaller child who is sitting on a tricycle or something a foot or two off the ground," said the doctor.
Dr. Younghale did not treat Dugan Davis, Mayor Dean's niece, but said a child hit by a slow moving vehicle can sustain a number of injuries because their bones are still developing.
Doctors also suggest that when parents talk to kids about looking both ways when walking across the street that they also talk about walking around cars in your driveway.
Here in Tennessee from 1990 to 2010 there were 14 child back over fatalities. In Kentucky 16 were reported during the same time frame.
