Governor gets Child Safety System demonstration

Child Safety System – opening doors to Michigan’s Governor Friday

The Reed City company welcomed Gov. Jennifer Granholm. She wanted to witness a new life-saving product that has received rave reviews from other high-ranking officials. 

“It’s indeed an honor to have one of our high-tech products catch the eye of someone like Governor Granholm,” said Heather Huber, Vice President. “It’s been a busy time for us with visits from the Governor and her Director of Labor and Economic Growth, David Hollister; Congressman Dave Camp, and Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land all within the past month. It’s encouraging to have high-level people see the urgent need for our child safety product.”

Granholm’s Reed City visit comes on her trip to Japan. When she met with over 20 companies pitching Michigan’s high technology capabilities to bring jobs to the state. Michigan has the highest unemployment rate at 7 percent – the national average is 5 percent.

Child Safety System products and advanced technology are examples of Michigan’s offers, with Nartron being “America’s Top 50 Innovator” in Inc. magazine.

ClearFast® Child Safety System

This space-age product is designed to stop injuries. 500 – 50 percent of children – are people who, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), are treated annually in hospital emergency rooms. All from injuries from power windows. According to Kids and Cars, a child safety advocate group, 3 percent of all non-traffic, non-crash deaths involving children under 15 years old occur by power window strangulation. 

The ClearFast® window sensor creates a space-charge field in the window opening. Detecting the child’s presence and won’t allow the window to close. When a child places a finger (or neck) in the opening when the window is closing, the window will always reverse before trapping the child.

Saving lives and preventing injuries

Engineering Vice President John Washeleski explains. “It’s basic physics,” Washeleski said. “It is a complete solution to saving lives and preventing injuries. The Japanese like this elegant technology and have moved forward to install it on their vehicles with volume production.”

“The governor offered to help in any way possible to promote high technology and bring new jobs to Michigan,” Washeleski said. 

Here in America, HR 2230 is pending in Congress, requiring automakers to install safe window sensors like ClearFast® “that automatically reverse direction when they detect an obstruction to prevent children from being trapped, injured or killed.”

HR 2230l

With HR 2230l, we expect a dramatic increase in jobs to meet the demand.

During her visit, Granholm commented, “It is very clear that our state is in the epicenter of the worldwide shift in manufacturing because we have the largest percentage of our state economy tied to manufacturing and the automotive industry.”

After witnessing the product and touring a Leelanau company last month, Granholm said – “This kind of high-end manufacturing is exactly an area that we can pursue, a kind of laser/radar technology that we were looking at before. Smart Close® is the kind of technology that we need to foster and create.”

Invest in advanced technology

President, Norman Rautiola, said that state officials now realize that Michigan must invest in advanced technology to lead its economic recovery, which can create the future high-paying, blue- and white-collar jobs.

After labor and economic growth director Hollister’s visit, Rautiola said, “With this high-level state marketing assistance, it accelerates the timetable to integrate ClearFast® into other Japanese, European and American vehicles.” Child Safety System for protecting your family is just the first step.