Cars already have alarms, dashboard messages and flashing lights intended to keep us safer but they need one more sensor-- a warning when you leave your toddler locked in.
To keep airbags from killing young children parents are instructed to place their youngsters in the vehicle’s rear seat. Good advice except now on hot days some youngsters are being forgotten, left behind to bake to death.
Moving kids to the back seat has markedly decreased the injuries or deaths due to airbags. At the same time, the number of kids who have sweltered to death in a hot car has increased ten fold. Since 1998 in the U.S. 513 children have died from hyperthermia in locked cars. And rarely a week goes by during hot weather that we don’t hear of another parent somewhere suffering the tragedy of inadvertently roasting their own child.
If the child isn’t outright killed by heat, the devastating damage to their internal organs and brain can turn them into a near vegetable.
The idea of forgetting your child in a car seems impossible. But if we can forget our keys, handbag, camera or six 2-litre juice bottles we plan to return to the supermarket for a recycling deposit, what’s to remind us of a quietly sleeping six-month-old in the back?
In many instances, the child is left behind when parents switch daycare delivery roles or each parent thinks the other has brought in the baby. One father, returning from a family trip, raced in to use the bathroom. Mom thought he had gone back for the child. Dad trusted Mom to have fetched her from her carseat. By the time they realized neither had, the child was far gone.
According to a report in the Jan Jose Mercury News, young children’s bodies heat up three to five times faster than adults, and cars parked in sunlight heat up quickly regardless of the temperature outside. Even when it’s only 80 degrees outside, temperatures inside a car can reach 109F in 20 minutes as dark surfaces such as dashboard and seats absorb the sun’s rays.
Some hazards are built into cars: Doors that can be unlocked only from the driver’s seat. Self-locking trunks.
Those hazards didn’t exist when I was a child. In fact, Dad had to hold the driver’s door closed with one elbow as he drove. And his window wouldn’t roll up; he had to stop, step out, press one palm on either side of the glass, and wrench it up.
What form might a sensor take? Plug into the car seat and refuse to lock the car doors until the baby is removed all the while wailing like a fire truck on its way to a fire? Customer pressure forced manufacturers to install airbags. Now they need to refine their vehicles to make babies safe from heatstroke.
The website http://ggweather.com/heat/ offers these safety recommendations:
Never leave a child unattended in a vehicle, not even for a minute. If you see a child unattended in a hot vehicle, call 911. Be sure that all occupants leave the vehicle when unloading. Don’t overlook sleeping babies.
Always lock your car and ensure children do not have access to keys or remote entry devices. If a child is missing, check the car first, including the trunk.
Teach your children that vehicles are never to be used as a play area. If a child is missing, always check the car firs. Place your purse or briefcase in the back seat as a reminder that you have your child in the car. Make “look before you leave” a routine whenever you get out of the car. Ensure your childcare provider will call you if your child does not show up for school.
Children should never be left in cars. Too many vehicles have burst into flames. If you find a child locked in a hot vehicle, heave a brick, then call 911.