Every week in this country, over fifty children are treated in emergency rooms with serious, at times fatal, injuries, because they were backed over by vehicles.

Most of the victims are very small children, less than two years old, and more than 60 percent of the vehicles were large SUVs, vans or pickup trucks. What is worse is that, contrary to most other accident statistics, back-over fatalities have increased dramatically in the last 15 years. Fatal back-overs went from 88 in the 1996-2000 period to 448 in 2006 to 2010, a 409 percent increase from one 5-year period to the other.

For Wisconsin motorists, these back-over accident statistics are sobering facts. Parents of very young children know how quickly they can move from one place to another, unpredictably vanishing into a zone of unknown dangers. Preparing for a trip, Wisconsin motorists are focused on loading the car, checking their personal stuff, saying goodbye or talking on the phone, and may forget when maneuvering their vehicle that small children may be around and come into harm's way.

Even if there was no one at the back of the car when you closed the hatch, that doesn't mean no one is there when you start backing out. The fact is: You don't know because you don't see.

Parents go to the extreme to protect their children in a car. Car seats and restraints are safer and stronger than ever. But the most dangerous place for toddlers to move around may be around the car, where no one can see them. What should you do?

• Check out the area all around the car before stepping into it;
• Find out, before you maneuver the car, where your kids are and make them stand in view of the car, without moving away while you back out of the driveway;
• Choose a vehicle with a rear-view video camera or have one installed.

If you have been hurt in a Wisconsin or Illinois car, truck or motorcycle accident, contact the attorneys of Hupy & Abraham, S.C. today at 800-800-5676 (toll-free) or 414-223-4800 (local) for a free evaluation of your case, or send us an e-mail with your questions. Hupy & Abraham has lawyer offices in Milwaukee, Madison, and Appleton in Wisconsin, and Gurnee and Bloomington in Illinois.