II. Background

    NHTSA is responsible for reducing deaths and injuries associated with motor vehicles. The agency, in its Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS), collects detailed data from states that produce an actual count of fatalities resulting from traffic crashes. The agency also gathers a national sample of police reported traffic crashes through the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS) General Estimates System (GES).
    NHTSA is also responsible for motor vehicle safety when there is not a crash or the event occurs off the public traffic way. When the agency tries to quantify safety problems associated with non-traffic or non-crash situations it often finds that it has little or no data and must rely on the data gathering efforts of others. While providing interesting and useful information, the data available from others usually provide insufficient detail to guide NHTSA as to whether or not a regulatory or some other response is needed and, if so, what that response should be. Issues arising in this area therefore sometimes require ad hoc information-gathering efforts.
    Such was the case in the summer of 1998 when in three separate incidents 11 children died from excessive heat after accidentally locking themselves in vehicle trunks. In January 1999, the agency assembled a panel of experts composed of industry, safety advocates, medical experts, law enforcement, and other relevant groups to address the non-traffic non-crash safety issue of trunks that cannot be opened from the inside should someone accidentally or through criminal intent become trapped inside. In June 1999, this panel recommended that NHTSA “should establish a national data system designed to measure the frequency and consequences of trunk entrapment.” On October 20, 2000, NHTSA published a Final Rule in the Federal Register establishing a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard, (FMVSS) No. 401: Internal Trunk Release, that requires all new passenger cars with trunks to be equipped with a release latch inside the trunk compartment beginning September 1, 2001.
    In March 2000, the agency also initiated a study of selected 1997 death certificates to determine the utility of death certificates in identifying deaths resulting from certain non-traffic or non-crash motor vehicle-related situations. That study focused on the following three issues:

    A report on this study of 1997 death certificates was published on May 6, 2002 and is in NHTSA Docket No. 1999-5063-286.
    NHTSA’s Office of Rulemaking conducted additional research to expand the work begun in the study of 1997 death certificates. The research involved an examination of selected 1998 death certificates. Other sources, including several databases and a number of academic research articles, were also examined. Invaluable assistance and guidance concerning the death certificate research involved was provided by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).
    The hazards examined in this report include two from the study of 1997 death certificates – death from excessive heat in the passenger compartment or trunk of a vehicle and death resulting from a power window or sunroof –and two other hazards - death from vehicle-generated carbon monoxide and death as a result of being struck by a vehicle backing up. In addition, this report examines the extent to which these non-traffic or non-crash hazards result in injuries.
    The criteria used to identify deaths from excessive heat inside the passenger compartment of a vehicle are essentially the same as those used to identify heat related deaths inside a vehicle trunk.
    The research methodology and results are reported on in the sections of the report that follow.