Look Before You Lock, Lock Around the Clock

BY GENA HUFF, Editor

The summer heat is upon us once again. Throughout the summer, there will be days at the pool, shopping trips, vacations, and disrupted schedules. As you go about your summer, remember to check your back seat to make sure your children are not there before you lock the door to the car. All too often, children are being left in the back seat of the car, forgotten, and much more quickly than you may think, that child can perish from heatstroke.

Don’t think it can happen to you? According to statistics from kidsandcars.org, an organization formed to protect children in and around motor vehicles in nontraffic incidents, in over 55% of hot car deaths, the caregiver UNKNOWINGLY left the child in the vehicle. It can happen to anyone. And in today’s world of constant distractions, it has become increasingly more common.

Yes, there are some people who leave the child to die from exposure in a hot car on purpose. Why? That can only be guessed, and we will likely never know or understand. In 13% of cases of hot-car deaths, the children were knowingly left. Four percent of cases have unclear circumstances. For the rest, the 83 percent, the majority were accidentally forgotten (55 percent) and 28 percent of the children got into the car on their own. And just because the temperature outside is not scorching hot, does not mean a child cannot die if trapped inside the vehicle.

Children have died from heatstroke in cars with outside temperatures as low as 60 degrees. Even at an outside temperature of 60 degrees the temperature inside your car can reach 110 degrees, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

The American Academy of Pediatrics shows heatstroke can happen when the outside temperature is as low as 57 degrees Fahrenheit (F). When left in a hot car, a child’s major organs begin to shut down when his/her temperature reaches 104 degrees F, and a child dies when his/her body temperature reaches 107 degrees F.

According to information on the website www.noheatstroke.org, the first car death this year occurred in Miami, Fla on Feb. 28. It was 81 degrees outside. The little boy’s name was Damon Cruz. He was one-year old. The most recent death (as of time of print) was in Crittenden, Ky, on June 9. It was 95 degrees outside. The victim was a two-year-old little girl. To date, there have been 12 car-related heatstroke deaths of children under 14.