Require backup cameras now, not later

Every major leap in automobile safety has come with inexplicable pushback from those who complain about added costs and abrogation of personal rights.

The seat belt was patented in 1955, and front-seat lap belts were offered in the next model year for Ford and Chrysler as options.

It took 12 years before they were mandated for all seats in every car in the U.S.

As an option in its most humongous Oldsmobiles, Buicks and Cadillacs, General Motors introduced a rudimentary air bag in the mid-1970s. Chrysler was the first American manufacturer to make them standard in 1988.

But it took another decade to make them mandatory in all cars.

So, it’s not surprising that backup cameras aren’t yet required in all vehicles.

Daily Herald transportation writer Marni Pyke explored in Monday’s newspaper the U.S. Department of Transportation’s plans to mandate them.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — that arm of the federal government that also pushed hard for seat belts and air bags — said that backover crashes kill 292 people a year and injure about 18,000 in the U.S. More than a third of the fatalities are children younger than 5 years old. And some 70 percent of child deaths and injuries come at the hands of a family member.

It’s horrible enough to kill a child in an accident, unbearable when it’s your own.

In an age when minivans, SUVs and crossovers are omnipresent, it’s no wonder this happens. Many vehicles are taller in back than your average adult.

Backup cameras, mounted above the license plate, give you a view of what’s behind you that rear and side view mirrors can’t get.

They are standard in many luxury cars, but the safety administration hopes to make them standard on most passenger vehicles.

They run between $160 and $200.

The safety administration plans to phase in the mandate over several years, requiring full compliance in 2015.

But the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers has asked for more time, saying there are significant cost concerns and technical adjustments to make.

Baloney.

Fred Kalmin learned tragically how important those little cameras could be. In 1995, he was busy jockeying cars in his Buffalo Grove driveway in preparation for a trip and was unaware that his 2-year-old daughter was behind his car.

“Your whole world stops,” Kalmin told Pyke. If backup cameras came as a standard feature, “my daughter would be alive today.”

You wouldn’t buy a car today without seat belts or air bags, would you? It’s a small price to pay.