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How Many Children Die in Backover Crashes Each Year?

Published 5 min read By Live Accident Tracker Editorial

Quick answer: A backover crash is when a reversing vehicle strikes someone standing behind it, most often in a driveway or car park. In the United States, NHTSA counted an average of 210 deaths and 15,000 injuries a year from backover crashes before backup cameras were required. Children under 5 accounted for 31% of those deaths, and adults aged 70 and over for 26%. A 2025 study of one major children's trauma centre found backover injuries in small children fell 62% after the camera mandate took effect.

What a backover crash is

A backover crash happens at low speed, usually when a driver reverses out of a driveway, a parking space or a garage. The person behind the vehicle is often someone the driver knows, and very often a small child. The driver cannot see the child because the child is below the rear window and inside the blind zone directly behind the car.

  • The crash typically happens close to home: driveways and car parks are the most common locations.
  • The vehicle is usually moving slowly, but a slow-moving car can still cause a serious injury to a small child.
  • NHTSA's estimate, made when it wrote the camera rule, was an average of 210 deaths and 15,000 injuries a year from backover crashes in the United States.
  • Children under 5 accounted for 31% of backover deaths, and adults aged 70 and over for 26%.

The two age groups at the ends of life are the most affected. Small children are hard to see and do not always move out of the way of a reversing car. Older adults may be slower to notice a reversing vehicle or to move clear of it. For the wider picture of road deaths in the United States, see US road deaths by state.

The 2018 camera rule

In March 2014 the US Department of Transportation issued a final rule requiring rear-visibility technology in new vehicles. The rule, known as FMVSS 111, applied to all vehicles under 10,000 pounds manufactured on or after 1 May 2018.

  • The camera system must show a 10-foot by 20-foot zone directly behind the vehicle.
  • NHTSA expected the rule to save 58 to 69 lives a year once the whole on-road fleet was equipped with the technology.

The rule did not apply to vehicles already on the road. A car built before May 2018 was not required to have a camera, so the benefit arrived gradually as older cars were replaced. That slow arrival is what makes the 2025 study below useful: it measured what changed once cameras became common. The rule itself is set out in NHTSA's rear-visibility announcement.

What the 2025 study found

In September 2025, researchers from UTHealth Houston presented a study at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference in Denver. They looked at backover injuries in children under 5 at one Level-1 paediatric trauma centre in Houston, comparing the seven years before the mandate with the seven years after it.

  • Backover injuries fell 62% after 2018: 53 cases before the mandate, 18 cases after it.
  • Severe injuries fell from 10 cases before 2018 to 2 cases after it.
  • The researchers also searched public records for children who died from a backover injury without reaching hospital. They found 19 children between 2011 and 2024: 13 before 2018 and 6 after it. Of those, 10 children died before 2018 and 4 died after it.
  • The researchers summarised the change as a near-50% reduction in severe injuries and 78% fewer deaths in small children.

These are the findings of one trauma centre and one public-records search, presented at a conference. They are not a national count, and conference findings are preliminary until they are peer-reviewed. But the direction is clear, and it matches what the camera rule was designed to do: show the driver the space behind the car that mirrors cannot reach.

What drivers can do today

A camera helps, but it does not remove the risk on its own. The most useful protection is a habit that costs nothing.

  • Walk around the vehicle before reversing, and check for children, pets and objects behind it.
  • Keep small children where you can see them, and never let a child play behind a parked car.
  • Reverse slowly, and use the camera together with the mirrors and a look over your shoulder.
  • If your car has no camera, a retrofit backup camera costs about $150 to $200, according to the study's lead author — a small sum against the cost of a hospital stay or a life.
  • In car parks, reverse into the space when you arrive so you can drive out forwards later.

For how children are protected — or not — as passengers, see Are Teen Passengers Really Buckling Up?.

How these numbers were counted

The national figures come from NHTSA's final rule on rear visibility, announced by the US Department of Transportation on 31 March 2014. The 210 deaths and 15,000 injuries are averages per year, estimated before the rule took effect, and the 31% and 26% shares are shares of backover deaths. The 58 to 69 lives a year is NHTSA's estimate of what the rule would save once the whole fleet was equipped, not a counted result.

The 2025 figures come from a single-centre study: 71 patients under 5 treated at the UTHealth Houston Level-1 paediatric trauma centre between 2011 and 2024, plus a public-records search that found 19 children with a backover injury in the same period. The study was presented at the American Academy of Pediatrics National Conference in Denver in September 2025 and had not been peer-reviewed when it was reported. Figures for a single hospital cannot be read as national totals. Today's reports are on today's accident reports.

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