National Child Occupant Special Study (NCOSS)

A Track Record of Success
Because more children today are riding in age-appropriate restraints, fewer are injured or killed in motor vehicle crashes. These advances in child passenger safety came from rigorous child occupant-focused research. The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), through its Partners for Child Passenger Safety (PCPS) crash surveillance system, played a leadership role in these successes. PCPS helped save thousands of children’s lives by informing new product development, test protocols and regulation, education, policy and medical practice. After proving its validity and usefulness, PCPS ended data collection Dec. 1, 2007.

CHOP, Industry, and NHTSA See a Critical Need

The auto industry is reinventing itself for the needs of the 21st Century, emphasizing greater fuel economy and other efficiencies. In order to ensure these “green” advances do not come at the expense of child occupant safety, government experts, researchers, safety advocates and industry members must have credible, high quality data. CHOP and NHTSA recognize this need and are collaborating in a series of feasibility and pilot studies. Funded by committed partners from the auto industry, the goal of these studies is to develop the specifications for a sustainable system that would leverage the existing federal transportation safety infrastructure, the National Automotive Sampling System (NASS).

NASS Special Study on Child Occupant Protection

The proposed National Child Occupant Special Study (NCOSS) would use NHTSA’s NASS infrastructure to identify children in crashes and apply rigorous child-focused data collection methodology to obtain in-depth crash information for children.

NCOSS will serve as the platform upon which government, industry, and the auto safety research and advocacy community can continue to advance motor vehicle safety for children and youth. The data will facilitate innovations in family-focused vehicle safety that could include:

  • better vehicle design that incorporates the unique safety needs of children
  • improved child restraints and booster seats that better protect children of all different sizes and weights
  • guidance that drivers need to maximize the safety of children and youth in vehicles

A Call to Action

In order to make a national child-focused crash surveillance system a sustainable research program within NHTSA, it needs to be fully funded as part of the 2010 Federal Highway Reauthorization as the National Child Occupant Special Study (NCOSS).  CHOP has been meeting with our Pennsylvania Congressional delegation to emphasize the importance of writing this into the Reauthorization. Once the Reauthorization is introduced, NCOSS will need your support to ensure it remains a funded program and is not cut from the budget. We will need child passenger safety (CPS) practitioners like you to call your local legislators to let them know how child-specific crash data will help CPS practitioners in every state.

What Can You Do?

Please subscribe to the Center for Injury Research and Prevention at CHOP’s bimonthly e-newsletter, Research in Action, to receive information and tools for grassroots advocacy, as action is needed. If you already subscribe, you will be sure to receive these important legislative updates. Thank you for your support.

Also, be sure to read the white paper which describes the need to restore NASS’ necessary capacity and enhance its capacity to monitor safety for children. The white paper also includes broad support for restoration of NASS and the development of NCOSS with a list of supporting organizations. When the time comes, you can share this document with legislators from your state.

For more in-depth understanding of how NCOSS would function and its usefulness to child occupant protection stakeholders, please read The Future of Child Passenger Safety Surveillance, a feasibility and justification report by The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia published in May 2008.

Proposed Specifications for NCOSS Surveillance
Proposed Operational Flow NCOSS Surveillance