Lack of safety devices in cars frustrates father

The trunk-release handle is standard issue now: a simple, glow-in-the-dark piece of plastic that, had it been invented sooner, might have saved the lives of five little playmates who died on a sweltering afternoon five years ago today.

The handles are federally mandated inside the trunks of all cars manufactured since September 2001, a move that stemmed in large part from the 1998 deaths in West Valley City. That summer, a particularly deadly one, 11 children nationwide died after being trapped in the trunks of cars.

Paul Smith, whose two little daughters died in the family Saturn along with two cousins and another friend, worked hard to persuade the government to force automakers to make trunks safer. He's grateful that something was done, but five years later he also wonders if auto companies have gone far enough to protect the nation's children.

He is frustrated, he says, "with the progress that was promised by GM and not delivered."

Smith is referring to an automatic trunk-release device that General Motors began studying in 1999 but abandoned in 2002. The device, developed by a Michigan company called Magna Donnelly, was designed to detect human motion in the trunk.

The automatic device is more reliable than the manual trunk releases currently in most vehicles, according to Magna Donnelly senior program manager Tom Start.

As part of their research into trunk entrapment, Start says, Magna Donnelly tested manual trunk releases on 36 children, ages 3 and 4. The study, published in 2001, revealed that the majority of 3-year-olds and some 4-year-olds tested either could not operate the manual handles or did nothing as they sat in the dark of the simulated trunk.

"We've basically shown that kids aren't going to pull the handle, especially under stress," Start says.

Federal guidelines

GM did its own study of manual trunk-release handles in 1999, concluding that "older children were more successful using the handle than younger children. Of the entire group of 6-year-olds, nine of 16 children operated the handle compared with one of 16 in the group of 3-year-olds." GM ignored that study, too, Start says.

Glow-in-the-dark manual handles also present another problem, he argues: if children gain access to the trunk through the back seat, the handle will not be exposed to a sufficient amount of light to activate the phosphorescence.