Safety
Power windows have come under some scrutiny after several fatal accidents in which children's necks have become trapped, leading to suffocation. Some designs place the switch in a location on a hand rest where it can be accidentally triggered by a child climbing to place his or her head out of the window. To prevent this, many vehicles feature a driver-controlled lockout switch, preventing rear-seat passengers (usually smaller children) from accidentally triggering the switches. This also prevents children from using them as toys and pets riding with their heads out windows from activating the power window switch.
Starting with the 2008 model year, U.S. government regulations required automakers to install power window controls that are less likely to be accidentally activated by children. However, the rules do not prevent all potential injuries to a hand, finger, or even a child's head, if someone deliberately holds the switch when the window is closing. In 2009, the U.S. auto safety administration tentatively decided against requiring all cars to have automatic reversing power windows if they sense an obstruction while closing. Proposed requirements concern "one-touch" up window systems, but most vehicles with this feature already have automatic-reversing. The federal government made a written contract that all automakers should make the lever switches (as opposed to the rocker and toggle switches) standard on all new vehicles by 1 October 2010.
Read more about this topic: Power Window
Famous quotes containing the word safety:
“Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.”
—Stephen Vizinczey (b. 1933)
“[As teenager], the trauma of near-misses and almost- consequences usually brings us to our senses. We finally come down someplace between our parents’ safety advice, which underestimates our ability, and our own unreasonable disregard for safety, which is our childlike wish for invulnerability. Our definition of acceptable risk becomes a product of our own experience.”
—Roger Gould (20th century)
“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind.... Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to.”
—Joseph Heller (b. 1923)