About Kids and Car Safety

Our Mission

Kids and Car Safety, a 501(c)(3) national nonprofit, is dedicated to saving the lives of children and pets in and around motor vehicles. Vehicle-related accidents are the #1 killer of children in the United States. Almost all of these tragedies are preventable.

There is a significant opportunity to protect children and pets by focusing efforts on keeping them safe in and around vehicles through risk identification, education, product redesign, and engineering changes.

What We Do

Kids and Car Safety is devoted to eliminating vehicle-related risks to children and pets through:

• Data Collection: We collect and analyze data on nontraffic incidents that injure and kill children
• Research and Analysis: We study trends and identify emerging vehicle safety issues
• Public Education: We provide awareness programs and educational materials
• Policy Change: We advocate for laws and regulations that protect children
• Product Redesign: We work with automakers to implement safety features
• Family Support: We help families channel their grief into positive change

Our Focus

Kids and Car Safety has a special focus on incidents that occur off of public roadways, mainly in parking lots and driveways. These everyday events are called nontraffic incidents. They include:

• Being run over (frontovers and backovers)
• Hot car deaths
• Carbon monoxide poisoning
• Car theft with children/animals inside
• Falls from vehicles
• Knocking cars into gear
• Drowning from not being able to exit a submerged vehicle
• Underage drivers
• Power window strangulation
• Trunk entrapment

Why It Matters

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) Non-Traffic Surveillance (NTS) system, an estimated 2,449 people were killed and 86,920 injured each year in non-traffic motor vehicle crashes during the 5-year period from 2016 to 2020. Additionally, NHTSA estimates that 506 persons were killed in non-traffic, non-crash vehicle incidents per year and another 647,000 persons were injured.