GM to Offer Trunk Escape Handle to Protect Children

Seeking to prevent the deaths of children, General Motors Corp. said it will offer an escape handle inside car trunks starting next year.

Ford Motor Co. officials also said Wednesday they were working on a similar mechanism to offer a way out for children trapped in the extreme heat of automobile trunks in the summer months.

GM and Ford combined control more than half the car market, and GM said it would share its trunk handle with other auto makers.

Nineteen children have died in the last decade after inadvertently locking themselves in trunks, often while playing, government officials said. Last summer, 11 children ages 2 to 6 died inside trunks--five in Utah, two in Greensboro, Pa., and four in Gallup, N.M.

GM officials say their 8,000-plus dealerships will have the trunk handles available for installation as optional equipment by March. The yellow handle is illuminated in the dark cargo area so a child can see it and might figure out how to escape without being told.

A mechanism also would be installed on the trunk latch to prevent the trunk from shutting unless an adult manually resets it.

The system will cost $50, including installation, GM officials said.

Ford Motor spokesmen said the company’s system would be available by mid-1999 but declined to specify how it would work.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has appointed a panel to study how to reduce trunk entrapment deaths and injuries.

“This issue of trunk entrapment may seem simple, but it is not simple at all,” said Phil Recht, NHTSA’s deputy administrator.

Heather Paul, head of the panel and executive director of the National Safe Kids campaign, said the panel will review about 700 cases of trunk entrapment of children and adults over several decades.

Escape handles sound like a good idea, she said. “I would expect a trap-resistant solution should be available to all car owners eventually,” she said.

Some critics have said criminals might be more likely to kill adults they place in trunks if they know victims can escape. In the case of the GM trunk kit, criminals would not be able to shut the trunk without adjusting the latch.

Paul said the panel would be working with law enforcement experts and examining the known cases of trunk entrapment to see if that is actually a problem.

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), a former state trooper and author of legislation to require trunk safety latches, doubts it would increase the threat of harm.

“Those cases don’t happen that way. They’re more spontaneous,” Stupak said. Criminals “are going to put you in the trunk and get the heck out of there.”

Janette Fennell, who was shut in a trunk by an armed robber in 1995, said auto makers should make trunk releases a standard feature on all cars rather than providing it as an option.

“If it’s an option, it puts the burden on consumers. But no one thinks it’s going to happen to them,” said Fennell, head of the Trunk Releases Urgently Needed Coalition, or TRUNC, in San Francisco.

DaimlerChrysler officials said their engineers were looking at the problem of trunk entrapment but want to work with the safety panel on an answer.