Virtually every safety feature in automobiles, even those we take for granted, like seat belts and airbags, became standard equipment only after overcoming intense resistance. The technologies that have made cars much safer for both passengers and pedestrians have come about because of the commitment, determination, and resourcefulness of those who refuse to surrender in the fight for positive change.

That’s why I am so grateful for the partnership of Sally Greenberg and the National Consumers League (NCL). The work they have done and continue to do is saving countless lives.

In the 1980s, healthcare professionals were publishing papers on the number of people, predominantly small children, who were being killed or injured by cars backing out of driveways or parking spots. A 1993 report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) found that as many as 200 pedestrians, mostly children, were being killed each year by backing out collisions. At least 50 children every week were being backed over by vehicles.

My organization, Kids and Car Safety, compiled data on the problem and concluded that the only solution would be to mandate a rear visibility standard—cameras that would allow the driver to see what was behind the car, particularly a small child who could not be seen through the rearview mirror or rear window. The regulators were not acting, so we began working with Congress on legislation to require a rear visibility standard allowing drivers to see behind them when backing up. After all, you cannot avoid hitting something or someone you cannot see.

That’s when I teamed up with Sally Greenberg, then with Consumers Union. We began a battle that would take years but was so very necessary to prevent more families from suffering avoidable tragedies. We matched our research and our firsthand witness testimonies against the arguments that rear backup cameras would add too much to the cost of cars and that drivers wouldn’t use them. We argued that they shouldn’t only be offered as an optional feature in luxury cars.

Sally and Consumers Union, along with Kids and Car Safety and NCL, tirelessly insisted that safety could not be offered only to those who could afford it.

Finally, in 2014, a new rule was issued and took effect in 2018, mandating that all vehicles sold or leased in the United States, no matter where they were manufactured, be equipped with a rear backup camera. Today, they are thought to be as essential as seat belts, airbags, side impact protection, and electronic stability control—features that no vehicle should ever be without. And it happened because of advocates like Sally Greenberg and others who simply wouldn’t back down to the powerful, well-financed opposition.

There is more to be done to make cars safer for drivers and their families. On average, about 40 children die annually in hot cars. Often, these are infants and toddlers in rear- facing car seats, and the driver, looking in the rearview mirror, can’t tell if the seat is occupied or not.

We’re pleased to have NCL’s powerful voice engaged in yet another effort to use effective technologies to save lives. Occupant detection systems can distinguish between living beings and inanimate objects in the vehicle and can alert the driver that a child is unattended in the vehicle. This system will save lives, as NCL has compellingly pointed out. There is resistance to making occupant detection systems a mandatory feature in new cars. There always is. Yet, we were successful in adding a lifesaving traffic safety provision designed to prevent hot car fatalities, in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA).

Kids and Car Safety and NCL have a solid track record of collaborating on these issues. When lives, health, and safety are at stake, I wouldn’t bet against us.

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Janette Fennell is the Founder and President of Kids and Car Safety, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing injury and death to children and animals in and around motor vehicles.

I wholeheartedly subscribe to the philosophy espoused by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. when he said that “human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable” and that it is dependent upon “the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.”

We do, in fact, live in a safer world today because of the tireless exertions and unyielding passion of Sally Greenberg and her team at the National Consumers League (NCL) to make it so. Even if achieving a lifesaving product safety improvement requires years of determined effort to overcome the fierce opposition of powerful interests, we have seen that NCL does not stop working until progress is achieved.

I first met Sally back in the late 1990s when I was the executive director of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), and Sally had just come to Washington, DC, to work for Consumers Union, which is now Consumer Reports. People thought with our shared interest in consumer protection, we would get along well. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship and a productive one.

For the past 15 years, we have been engaged in an effort to make table saws less dangerous. This is an issue of considerable and devastating magnitude. Each year, there are approximately 30,000 table saw accidents that require medical treatment, including about 4,000 amputations.

Dr. Steve Gass, an attorney, physicist, and amateur woodworker, came up with an idea to fix this. He developed a sensor and a braking mechanism that would stop a saw blade immediately upon contact with skin, rendering what would have been a severe laceration into the equivalent of a paper cut. At first, Steve and his partners tried to get the table saw industry to license his new technology and incorporate safety into the saws they sell to the public. But the industry wasn’t interested in spending money to protect their own customers. So, Steve and his partners founded a table saw company called SawStop. These saws have prevented tens of thousands of injuries in the 20 years they have been on the market.

Dr. Gass and his partners believed that safety technology should become the standard for the industry, but larger table saw manufacturers fought back and were successful in keeping federal action from occurring. Sally Greenberg, an amateur woodworker herself, heard about this on National Public Radio and got involved. It has been a difference maker.

NCL has been a key player in a decades-long campaign that involved, in part, bringing victims of table saw accidents face-to-face with members of Congress and CPSC commissioners. It’s one thing to hear about a problem. It’s quite another to meet a firefighter who could no longer hold a fire hose and couldn’t do the job he loved, a musician who could no longer play guitar and became suicidal, or a high school student who lost fingers in shop class.

It has been a long battle against an entrenched and powerful industry, but we’re now in the final stages of federal rulemaking that will not just mitigate the risk of table saw accidents, but virtually eliminate that risk. This would not have happened if not for Sally Greenberg and NCL.

But that is what NCL has done for 125 years. It’s thanks to this organization’s work, for example, that rearview backup cameras are now standard in cars. When the technology was developed, it was only available as an option for luxury vehicles. It took NCL and other advocates years of determined advocacy, pointing out that the lack of these cameras was leading to hundreds of deaths—mostly of small children—and thousands of injuries each year. Today, thanks to this work, cars are safer, and more children are alive.

Referring again to Dr. King’s words, we can never take progress for granted or assume it will occur, not without the determination of those who will never give up, no matter how fierce the opposition or how difficult the fight. That is Sally Greenberg and her team, and that is the history of the National Consumers League.

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Pamela Gilbert is a Partner in the law firm of Cuneo Gilbert & LaDuca LLP and previously served as Executive Director of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Consumer Program Director at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, and Executive Director at Public Citizen’s Congress Watch.