And on Tuesday, also in Florida: A mother was charged with neglect after leaving one of her 18-month-old twins in a hot car for hours.
That’s just the past three weeks.
But while the cases are troubling, the numbers aren’t massive — according to a researcher at San Francisco State University, 15 children nationally have died of heatstroke in vehicles so far in 2014. On average, about 38 kids across the nation die in hot cars annually, according to KidsandCars.org, a public safety awareness and advocacy organization. (By comparison, in 2010, 34 per 100,000 children ages 0-19 died from drowning just in Ohio, according to the National Center for Child Death Review Policy and Practice in Okemos, Mich. In all motor-vehicle incidents, 144 per 100,000 died just in Ohio that year, the same source said.)
No hyperthermia deaths in vehicles so far this year have happened in Ohio, according to San Francisco State. From 1998 to 2012, however, there have been 16 such deaths in the Buckeye State.
Child safety advocates say the worst attitude is: That could never happen to me or my child.
Think again, they say.
“I do this for a living,” said Jessica Saunders, coordinator of Safe Kids Greater Dayton, a spokeswoman at Dayton Children’s Hospital and mother of a 3-year-old. “I swear, you can ask anybody in my office, my husband texts me every single day, around 8 a.m. (asking), ‘Is our daughter at day care?’”
Janette Fennell, president and founder of KidsandCars.org, thinks the problem is under-reported. No one has a number of “near-misses,” she said.
“No one knows how often children are left alone in vehicles,” Fennell said. “I would not be surprised to say 10,000 a day. People run in and get their dry-cleaning, or people run in to pay for their gas. It happens all the time. People drop off the older child at day care and leave the baby in the car.”
We learn of incidents only when a child is killed or a parent is arrested, she said.
Of the 606 vehicular heatstroke child deaths since 1998, 52 percent were linked to forgetfulness — parents are distracted for just a moment, according to Jan Null, a climatologist who tracks the issue at San Francisco State. Perhaps the parent behind the wheel received a surprise phone call or took a wrong turn. A routine was interrupted.
Eighteen percent of fatalities are parents intentionally leaving their children in vehicles, according to Null.
The deaths are 100 percent preventable, Saunders said.
“It’s one thing to say, ‘How could you ever forget your child?’” she said. “But it’s another thing to say, ‘You know what: I could. Let me do whatever I can to prevent this from happening.’”
Some tips: Leave your purse, briefcase, work entrance badge or phone in the back next to your child’s safety seat. Have your spouse or a relative text you daily. Have your day-care provider call if you don’t drop your child off and you haven’t called.
Get in the habit of looking in the back seat every time you arrive at a destination.
Some people bristle at the suggestion that a parent will remember a phone but not a child. Fennell says they should get over it.
“It’s not at all that we’re comparing one thing (a phone) to another (a sleeping child),” Fennell said. “It’s has to do with how our brain works, with how our memory works. You do those things because we’re human beings, and we forget.”
Greg Ramey, a child psychologist at Dayton Children’s, said too often parents are simply overwhelmed. Cell phones, radios, traffic signals, other motorists — the day’s events all distract us.
“There was the myth years ago that we could, quote, multi-task,” Ramey said. “I think the research has absolutely put that myth to rest. There’s just a limit to what the brain, from a physiological point of view, and from a psychological point of view, can handle.”
We have to figure out a way to “tone things down a bit,” he said.
“It’s not meant to be an excuse, but it is meant to be an explanation,” Ramey said.
One answer lies in persistent education, Null said. “The more good information that’s out there, the better,” he said.
KidsandCars.org has pushed for seat-belt sensors and an order requiring the federal government to study technology to address the problem, Fennell said. A transportation bill with some of those provisions passed in June 2012, after 19 extensions of a previous transportation bill.
Automakers build sensors and warning lights to alert us to pull our seat belts on, increase tire pressure, change the oil and turn off the headlights. Why not, Fennell asks, a warning that a child is sleeping in a safety seat?
“Who has decided that it’s more important not to have a dead car battery than a dead baby?” she asked.
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