Washington ? It’s been nearly a decade since the night auto safety became personal for Janette Fennell, when she and her husband were forced into the trunk of their car at gunpoint and managed to escape.

In that time, Fennell has become a nationally recognized auto safety advocate. She is responsible for the release levers that are now mandatory in trunks. And she scored her latest victory earlier this month when the government announced it would require safer power window switches.

“If you really put your heart and soul into it, you can affect change,” said Fennell, 50, of Leawood, Kan.

Federal regulators talked about changing power window switches for decades because the designs made it too easy for children to close them.

But it was Fennell, the president of Kids and Cars, who forced the issue. She collected data from news and police reports, documenting the deaths of 23 children strangled by power windows. She convinced members of Congress to support her cause. She invited grieving parents to share their stories. She even shut vegetables in car windows to demonstrate their power.

“Janette’s persistence is her greatest weapon. She is just unrelenting,” said Joan Claybrook, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration recently said that by 2008 all vehicles must have power window switches that are more difficult to press by accident.

Research and experience

Fennell, who spent nearly 20 years in marketing for Eastman Kodak Co. and Helene Curtis Industries Inc., said she was successful because of a mix of sales skills and careful research. When she began her push for trunk levers, Fennell quickly realized she would have to collect data on trunk deaths because the government didn’t.

“The rule of the land was, if you have no data, there’s no problem,” Fennell said. “Building this database … showed people that there was a problem.”

Janette Fennell talks to her children Alex, 9, center, and Noah, 5, at their home in Leawood. Fennell, the president of Kids and Cars, has successfullly lobbied the government to require safer power window switches on cars.

Fennell documented the deaths of 260 people in trunk entrapments over a 20-year period.

Fennell also is driven by the horrifying night in 1995 when armed kidnappers strode down her San Francisco driveway, stuffed her and her husband in the trunk of their Lexus and drove off, leaving the couple’s 8-month-old son behind.

After the kidnappers robbed them and abandoned the car, she and her husband escaped by digging through the trunk’s upholstery and finding the wires that released the trunk. Their son was unharmed.

Fennell and her husband formed the Trunk Releases Urgently Needed Coalition six months after their ordeal. NHTSA in 2000 began requiring all vehicles to have trunk release latches.

TRUNC eventually merged with a group called Kids ‘n Cars, founded by a couple whose toddler was run over by a car. Fennell later split off and formed Kids and Cars.

Kids and Cars took in $303,576 in 2003, mostly from private donations, according to GuideStar, which monitors charities. It makes Fennell competitive with other safety groups, such as the 34-year-old Center for Auto Safety in Washington, which took in about $170,000 more.

Other issues

Fennell’s work is far from complete. She wants NHTSA to require windows that automatically reverse if they’re closing on something. She wants automakers to install cameras in the backs of vehicles so drivers can avoid backing over children. She documented 91 deaths in backover accidents last year.

While safety advocates generally praise Fennell, some say groups like hers make it difficult for NHTSA to focus on more complex issues like drunken driving or excessive speed.

“We have to devote our energy where we can save the most amount of lives,” said Jonathan Adkins, a spokesman for the Governors Highway Safety Assn. NHTSA spokesman Rae Tyson said the agency worked well with Fennell, but he acknowledges the agency has chafed when Congress and others try to set its priorities.

Automakers said they already were installing better window switches on their own, and they have expressed concerns about the cost of many safety measures. NHTSA rejected automatically reversing windows because they would have cost $50 per vehicle, or hundreds of millions of dollars for the industry.

Fennell is sensitive to that, but she insists automakers must to better.

“I don’t want to be outrageous. If every idea was added to a vehicle, it would be a tank and nobody could afford it,” Fennell said.

“But we as a country keep saying it’s all about the kids. We have to protect them.”