It’s a dire warning that cannot be said or written often enough, especially as this hot summer season approaches, and the urgent warning is this: We must all raise awareness everywhere to prevent hot-vehicle deaths of children and animals.
Thankfully, a public-pressure campaign has begun to urge U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy to issue a rule-making standard to require rear-seat occupant detection devices in all new vehicles. That rule was mandated by Congress in 2021 as part of the bipartisan Infrastructure and Jobs Act. Such detection devices would be a good step in the right direction.
That public pressure was started after a recent hot-car death in Maryland of a 2-year-old girl left in a car by her father. It was the 17th hot-car death in Maryland since 1998 and the 1,127th nationwide since 1990, according to “Kids and Car Safety.” Even one such death is one too many.
The best way to prevent hot-car deaths of children is to never – ever! – leave a child or pet alone in a car in any season, much less summer. Besides extreme heat or cold, there’s another good reason never to leave a child in a car alone, even if the adult driver is just rushing into a store to get an item or two. That’s because there have been alarming instances of cars being stolen or hijacked when a child is alone in a vehicle. Imagine the terror of such a child!
Yes, detection devices in cars could help. But more importantly, adult vigilance (by parents, guardians, babysitters) is vital. Knowledge is the key.
Even when outdoor temps are in the 60s or 70s, car interior temps can rise above 80 degrees in just 10 minutes and increase to more than 100 degrees within 15 or 20 minutes. Add to that this fact: babies’ body temps can rise three to five times more rapidly than adult body temps. The same holds true for pets.
In this hectic, busy world, it is all too common to be distracted, to become forgetful. Some drivers in a hectic hurry can forget that small child or baby in the back seat when they leave their cars for a “quick errand” or when they plain forget a child is in the vehicle.
Another danger is when one parent almost always brings a child to daycare, for example, but on one particular day the other parent is tasked with doing that on the way to work. It is all too easy to forget the task of dropping off the child, and that is why many children have died in hot or freezing cars – that memory lapse on a hectic, busy morning or afternoon.
One way to prevent that is to have one parent call the other to be absolutely certain that other parent did, in fact, drop the child off at daycare, school or wherever.
Another way is to tie a ribbon on the steering wheel or driver’s car-door handle so when exiting the vehicle, that driver will be reminded the baby or sleeping child is in the back seat.
To learn more about this horrific topic and how to prevent child deaths in vehicles, visit the “Kids and Car Safety” website. And then (this is so important!) discuss and share what you’ve learned with all family members, friends, neighbors and co-workers.
