Partners for Child Passenger Safety (PCPS)

What was "Partners for Child Passenger Safety" (PCPS)?

Motor vehicle crashes remain the leading cause of death for children in the United States.

State Farm® has had a longtime interest in improving auto safety, going back to the 1950s, when we helped found the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

State Farm has helped save children’s lives through our involvement in Partners for Child Passenger Safety (PCPS); the first academic-corporate partnership devoted to significantly helping reduce deaths and injuries to children in motor vehicles.

PCPS was a research collaboration between State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company, the largest auto insurer, and The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), the nation’s first pediatric hospital.

This program’s goal was to better understand how and why children are being killed or injured in motor vehicle crashes.

The PCPS research method combined interviews, on-site crash investigations and computer crash simulations with interdisciplinary analysis.

For ten years (1997-2007), PCPS created the largest source of data on children involved in motor vehicle crashes. This data is valuable for vehicle and restraint design, public policy and parent education.