Secondary Safety Device

Currently some manual transmission cars require the driver to operate a foot pedal or perform some other action before a key can be used to start a car. But most vehicles on the roads today have no such secondary safety measure, meaning that cars can be started very easily by under age and incompetent persons. As we move to more and more vehicles with push-button starts, the problem of young persons starting cars may become more acute.
Since Iain's death Mark has kept up lengthy correspondence with the Department for Transport, the traffic side of the European Commission and many car manufacturers, trying to persuade people of the necessity of a secondary safety measure to prevent cars being started by accident.  He has had tremendous support in the campaign from many politicians, in particular Danny Alexander, MP, Jim Fitzpatrick, MP, a former Minister for Transport, and Iain Hudghton, MEP, to effect this design change among car manufacturers.

Meeting with the Department for Transport, 2008
(Left to Right: Kevin Clinton (RoSPA), Mark Goodwill and Danny Alexander, MP)

Finally in July 2009 we got the result we hoped for. Representatives of the JAMA and EAMA agreed to fit such a safety device to all new, manual models with push button start.

Automatic transmission vehicles are currently safe as the vehicle has to be in "park" before it will start and the brake pedal has to be depressed before the vehicle will shift into "drive".
Of course this is only part of the problem: there are many cars on Europe's roads which do not have such a safety device, and Iain's Trust aims to make parents of young children aware of the potential for a fatal accident in their own driveway before there is a repeat of the accident which killed Iain.

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