Articles Posted in Child Safety

As we previously discussed on our Fort Myers Injury Blog, students of all ages are heading back to school this month. While many of them take the school bus to school there is still quite a few that bike or walk. There are a number of hazards that a child will face during their journey to and from school that could result in child injury in Naples.

According to iWalk, there are about 25,000 student pedestrians injured on their way to school every year. The younger the student, the more at risk they are for being involved in a motor-vehicle accident on our roadways. Many children are unable to understand the flow of traffic and other dangers.

Our Fort Myers child injury attorneys would like to ask that all parents and teachers take a moment out of their day to discuss pedestrian and bicycle safety with their students. We also ask that school officials take a look at the most dangerous routes that our children take to school and consider ways to make them safer for our young ones, including traffic lights and crossing guards.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, roughly 85 percent of children get to school each day by school bus, car or by public transit. A little more than 15 percent of trips are made to and from school on-foot or by bicycling.

Students who live within a two-mile radius of the school they attend are required to walk to school. Under Florida Statute 1006.23, school officials are required to examine these areas to ensure that hazards are kept to a minimum. These areas must meet state criteria to ensure they’re safe enough for our young children.

The City of Cape Coral Police, the City of Fort Myers Police and the Lee County Sheriff’s Department also assist with safety efforts. Cape Coral provides crossing guards from its own force where Fort Myers provides crossing guards from an independent contractor.

The National Safety Council offers these safety tips for children that walk to bike to school. Parents are urged to discuss these tips with their children as well:

Walking to School

-Never walk alone. Always walk with a group and with a responsible adult.

-If there isn’t a sidewalk to walk on, walk facing oncoming traffic.

-Always cross the street at an intersection or at a street corner.

-Don’t step off the curb until you look both ways to see if a car is coming.

-Keep looking left and right as you cross the street.

-Do not run. Always walk across the street.

-Never dart out in front of a parked car because oncoming drivers may not be able to see you.

Bicycling to School

-Make sure to always wear your helmet.

-Make sure that your helmet fits. Make sure that there is the width of two fingers between the bottom of your helmet and your eyebrows.

-Always ride on the right-hand side of the road in a single file line in the same direction as traffic.

-Always come to a complete stop before you cross a street.

-Wear bright colors so that drivers are more likely to see you during your early morning venture.

-Get out and practice. The more experienced you are on a bicycle, the less likely you are to be involved in a serious accident.
Continue reading ›

Our hearts go out to the parents and families of the two children who suffered tragic accident this past week. Two children suffered heat-related injuries in Cape Coral and in Collier County. One child died, according to WINK News. Both children were left unattended in hot vehicles. The Florida Department of Children and Families in Southwest Florida is investigating the cases.

Our Cape Coral personal injury attorneys are urging parents to be extra careful not to leave their child in an unattended car this summer. You think this is something that could never happen to you or your child, but the truth is it happens more often than we’d like to think. According to the San Francisco State University Department of Geosciences, nearly 50 children under the age of 14 died because of hyperthermia in 2010 alone.

There have already been 21 reported fatalities in 2011. Since 2002, at least four children in Southwest Florida have died as a result of being left in a hot car. Florida is second only to the state of Texas in the number of child deaths due to hyperthermia.

“These twenty-one deaths were tragic and preventable – not one of those children should have lost their lives in this horrible way,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “We need to do everything we can to remind people to be vigilant and never leave a child alone in or around a motor vehicle.”

Recently, a 1-year-old was accidentally left in a car in Cape Coral and died after being admitted to Cape Coral Hospital. Just the next day, an 11-month-old in Collier County was rescued from a hot car by law enforcement.

It is illegal in the state of Florida to leave a child that is under the age of 6 in an unattended or unsupervised vehicle for more than 15 minutes. The temperature inside a vehicle, even when the windows are cracked, can quickly reach as high as 140 degrees. According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, research, hyperthermia is the leading cause of non-crash vehicle deaths for children under the age of 14.

Another child nearly drowned in deep end of the community pool at Lochmoor Villas in North Fort Myers, according to The News-Press. The 4-year-old lost grip of his inner tube and sank 6 feet to the bottom of the pool. He remained motionless at the bottom of the pool, face down, as his babysitter failed to notice.

After nearly 5 minutes of being submerged in the water, the boy resurfaced in the arms of a retired asset security manager for Wal-mart with CPR training. He was revived and after more than 6 minutes of CPR, paramedics arrived and took the child to HealthPark Medical Center.

The Fort Myers boy is one of nearly 20 child near-drowning cases that have seen by the Lee Memorial Health System this year. Nationwide, approximately 5,000 children are hospitalized each year because of drowning and related accidents.

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), there have been 37 drownings and 38 near-drowning incidents reported already in 2011. In an effort to reduce these incidents, the CPSC has launched a new 2011 campaign, Pool Safely: Simple Steps Save Lives, consisting of television and radio public service announcements to highlight a number of important water safety steps that can be taken to save lives.

The CPSC is urging parents and children to adopt as many safety steps as possible in and around pools and spas. The pool safely campaign is a first-of-its-kind campaign launched by the federal government to raise national public education efforts to reduce child drownings and near-drownings in swimming pools and spas.

“As the summer swimming season approaches, our message to parents and caregivers is simple: stay safe in and around pools and spas by practicing as many safety steps as possible. This includes staying close to children at all times, knowing water safety skills like CPR, and ensuring anti-entrapment drain covers are installed in all pools and spas,” said Inez Tenenbaum, Chairwomen of the CPSC.

Pool safety tips to keep your child safe near pools this summer:

-Never leave your children alone in or near the pool.

– An adult who knows CPR should always be present when children are swimming.

-Practice touch supervision with children under the age of 5. This means that the adult is within an arm’s length of the child at all times.

-Keep rescue equipment, like a shepherd’s hook or life preserver, and a telephone by the pool.

-Do not use air-filled “swimming aids” as a substitute for approved life vests.

-When children are done swimming, secure the pool so they can’t get back into it.

-When not in use, remove all toys from the pool after use so children don’t try to reach for them.
Continue reading ›

Last week was the start of a new generation of rules for safer crib sales at local and national retail stores in an attempt to prevent crib-related child injury in Fort Myers and elsewhere.

Back in December, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) voted unanimously to approve new mandatory crib standards. These new standards are the most stringent crib safety standards in the world. From now on, all importers, distributors, manufacturers, and retailers are required to offer only cribs that meet the CPSC’s new full-size and non-full-size crib standards.

Our Naples personal injury attorneys calculate that the CPSC has recalled more than 11 million dangerous cribs since 2007 after at least 32 infant suffocation and strangulation deaths since 2000 were associated with drop-side cribs with detaching side rails and a number of deaths happened because of fault and defective crib hardware. Because of these incidents, the CPSC improved their regulations in an attempt to prevent these tragedies and keep children safer in their cribs.

New crib regulations and rules include:

-Stopping a manufacturer from making and selling dangerous, traditional drop-side cribs.
-Tightening up and strengthening mattress supports and crib slats -Requiring crib hardware to be more durable.
-Making crib safety testing more rigorous.

“A safe crib is the safest place for a baby to sleep. It is for this reason that I am so pleased that parents, grandparents and caregivers now can shop with confidence and purchase cribs that meet the most stringent crib standards in the world,” said Chairwoman Inez Tenenbaum. “From the start, our goal has been to prevent deaths and injuries to babies in cribs, and now the day has come where only stronger and safer cribs are available for consumers to purchase.”

In addition to these new rules, starting in December of 2010 all child care facilities, including family child care homes and infant Head Start centers will be required to use only cribs that comply with the new crib standards. Public accommodations, such as hotels and motels, and rental companies must comply with the new crib standards well.

In other child-related news, CPSC also recently reported that Macy’s Inc., of Cincinnati, Ohio, agreed to pay a civil penalty of $750,000. The company agreed to pay this penalty after CPSC staff discovered that Macy’s knowingly failed to report to CPSC immediately, as required by federal law, that it had sold children’s sweatshirts, sweaters and jackets with drawstrings at the neck. These items were sold between 2006 and 2010.

Children’s upper outerwear that has drawstrings can include sweatshirts, sweaters and jackets. These drawstrings pose a strangulation hazard to children that can result in serious injury or death.

The sweatshirts, sweaters and jackets are the subject of the penalty agreement were sold at Macy’s and Macy’s-owned stores, including Bloomingdale’s, and Robinsons-May. Failing to notify the CPSC after a recall like this has been illegal since 2008.

Federal law requires that all manufacturers, distributors and retailers report to CPSC just 24 hours after they obtain information that reasonably supports the conclusion that a product contains a defect which could create a substantial product hazard, creates an unreasonable risk of serious injury or death or fails to comply with any consumer product safety rule.

Drawstring guidelines were put into effect by the CPSC back in 1996. These guidelines were meant to help prevent children from strangling on or getting entangled in the neck and waist drawstrings of upper outerwear.
Continue reading ›

Now that Florida has enacted a law that makes not wearing a seatbelt for adults a primary traffic offense, a Florida Senator is pushing for similar legislation regarding booster seats for children in cars. If he is successful, not having children of a certain age secured in a booster seat, just as with an adult driver and their seat belt, will become reason enough for law enforcement to pull a driver over and issue a citation.

Sen. Thad Altman, R-Melbourne, has filed a bill that would require children be secured by a booster seat harness. This is the fourth consecutive year he has pushed for the new law. The law came before former Governor Jeb Bush back in 2002, and was vetoed, with Bush referring to concerns over intrusiveness of government into family affairs. At that time, very few states had enacted similar legislation. Today, however, Florida, along with Arizona and South Dakota, are the only three states without such a law in place. Altman is vowing to hold his ground, continue fighting and see to it that his fellow lawmakers pass his bill, and saves young lives in the process.

Currently, Florida statutes require a child be in a child safety seat if they are 3 years old or younger. After age 3, with the absence of the booster seat law, children are supposed to use a seat belt, as are adult vehicle occupants. The problem is that many experts are concerned that standard seat belts can actually cause serious injury to a child, due to their height and weight. A properly designed and installed booster seat raises the child’s vertical position in the car, reducing the risk of injury that can come from them using a standard seat belt.