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Statement of Dr. Greg Gulbransen

Oyster Bay, NY

March 23, 2004

My name is Dr. Greg Gulbransen, and I am a pediatrician practicing in Oyster Bay, New York. I spend most of my time caring for the health and safety of children. I would consider myself to be a very safety-conscious professional and parent. My tragic story could absolutely happen to any family in America.

On October 19th, 2002, my wife Leslie and I returned home from an evening out. It was 9:30 p.m., and I went outside to put my SUV in the driveway. Inside were the babysitter, my wife and my two sons – or so I thought. While I was backing up the car into the driveway, I felt the wheel go over a bump. I jumped out of the SUV so I could figure out what I had hit. There on the driveway was my 2-year-old son Cameron, bleeding to death from massive head injuries.

I can’t begin to describe the shock and devastation. How did this happen? He was in the house and I looked where I was going. How could I have missed him? I had looked in the rear view mirrors, the side mirrors and out the back window, but I never saw him. I never even had a chance of seeing Cameron. He was too small.

While SUVs, minivans and pickup trucks are becoming more and more popular, they are also very unsafe in respect to blind spots. We absolutely do not appreciate how dangerous these larger vehicles are.

Accidents like my son’s are happening all the time, but we’re not even aware of the real statistics because the government doesn’t keep track of this data. As tragic as Cameron’s accident was, it was never entered into a database. Without this data collection, the government is not set up to collect information and make the necessary safety improvements.

The government needs to do several things. First, it needs to set up a database to start tracking these incidents. Many people think Cameron’s accident was a freak accident, but it wasn’t. Kids And Cars is a child’s car safety advocacy group that tracks backovers, and they tell us that last year alone at least 72 children were backed over and killed. That’s more than one a week.

Countless more were seriously injured. That is absolutely unacceptable! To make matters worse, when children are backed over, most of the time the person operating the vehicle is a member or close friend of the family.

The next thing the government should do is to ensure that vehicles are equipped with technology to help people see behind them when they are backing up. Vehicles should be equipped with cameras or sensors to give drivers the visibility they need. The legislation pending before Congress would require a study of technologies that would be best. Once we learn what technology best improves visibility, manufacturers should be required to put it in all vehicles.

This issue is extremely important for our families. It is time to face the obvious and realize we must make vehicles safer to prevent what happened to my family from happening to yours. No one should live my family’s horror. If legislators do not pass the proposed bills, next year at least 70 children will be killed and thousands will be injured. Please pass this bill. Thank you.

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