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The topic of children who died inside of a hot car is one of the more frustrating and tragic safety hazards out there, and it happens more often than most parents would imagine. On average, about one child dies each and every week after being left in a hot car. Sometimes it happens because busy, stressed out parents simply forget a child is in the back seat. It's easier to do than you might think, and could happen to anyone under the right circumstances (or perhaps we should say wrong circumstances). Parents frequently share child care duties, and when someone's mind is under severe stress, it's all too easy to tune out other things and forget they have the baby with them.
Other tragedies occur because parents underestimate the danger. They leave a sleeping child in the car for "just a minute" to run a quick errand, and it takes a little bit longer than they planned on. Five minutes turn into 20 or 25, and they don't realize that this is plenty of time for the temperature to rise to potentially fatal levels.
The temperatures inside a parked car
According to the CDC, when the temperature outside the car is 80 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature 'inside can be anywhere from 131 degrees to a scorching 172. Studies by the CDC have shown that temperatures inside a parked car can rise by as much as 20 degrees in the first 10 minutes alone.
Asphalt attracts heat, and the temperatures on asphalt can be as much as 10 degrees hotter than the temperature outside. This makes parking lots like heat skillets. The hottest time of the day tends to be around 3 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon, but the temps in many places can be deadly at all times of day.
How quickly a child can succumb to the heat inside a car
In an illustration of how quickly it can happen, bystanders in Phoenix, Arizona discovered a baby who was crying inside a hot car. By the time paramedics arrived about 5 minutes later, she had stopped breathing. She had been left in the car for no more than about half an hour; her mother had accidentally forgotten she was in the car. (CBS5 News Phoenix, 6-2-08)
If you live in an area such as Arizona, the temperatures routinely rise to 110 degrees throughout the summer. That's hot enough, but when you park your car on the heated island of a parking lot, where temperatures can be 10 degrees higher, you're already up to 120. This means that after just 10 minutes, temperatures inside the car can exceed 140 degrees - a dangerously high level for a young child. Kids are less able to regulate their body heat, and so they succumb to heat extremes faster. So as you can see, under the right conditions, it doesn't take long for a mistake to turn disastrous.
Kids in hot cars: What citizens can do
1. Make a habit of looking into every car as you walk your path through the parking lot to wherever you are going. If every citizen simply got into this habit, we might cut these tragedies substantially.
If a parent has forgotten a child was with them, whether that child lives or dies is often determined by whether or not alert citizens spot that child and become their secondary safety net. Children have died in cars parked in the parking lots of busy restaurants or grocery stores as people walked back and forth right past them, without anyone paying attention. Let's make sure scenes like this don't continue to happen.
2. If you happen to find a young child unattended in a car, wait by the child next to the car, and call authorities. If the child is clearly struggling, call 911.
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