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Hot Cars - Latest News
How We Can Protect Children From Dying in Hot Cars
Right now, somewhere in the United States, a family is going about their daily lives unaware that by year’s end their child will die in a hot car. They will suffer the same loss that has already consumed 23 families in guilt and grief this year. That includes four this past weekend in Florida, Pennsylvania, Missouri and Texas. On average, 37 children die this way annually in the United States—meaning that at this pace, another 14 more American families will experience this tragedy this year.
A Mother’s Plea After Baby Dies In Hot Car
Texas leads the nation in heatstroke-related deaths of children in cars by a large margin with 106 fatalities from 1991 to 2015. Janette Fennell is founder and president of KidsAndCars.org, a national child safety nonprofit based in Philadelphia. She says those numbers began drastically rising in the 1990s when laws were passed requiring young children be placed in the back seat to avoid injuries from airbags. “Out of sight, out of mind,” says Fennell. “We further are keeping our kids safer by having them rear-facing. And if you’re the driver of a vehicle, you can’t tell if there’s a baby in that car seat or not — because they’re in their little cacoon, they fall asleep, you’re probably sleep-deprived and it’s a real recipe for disaster.”
Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime?
Miles Harrison, 49, was an amiable person, a diligent businessman and a doting, conscientious father until the day last summer -- beset by problems at work, making call after call on his cellphone -- he forgot to drop his son, Chase, at day care. The toddler slowly sweltered to death, strapped into a car seat for nearly nine hours in an office parking lot in Herndon in the blistering heat of July. It was an inexplicable, inexcusable mistake, but was it a crime? That was the question for a judge to decide.
Father gives tearful warning after leaving child in hot car
The loss of a child is unimaginable, but what if it was an accident you, the parent, could have prevented? 25 children died last year from being accidentally left inside a hot car. As the temperatures soar this summer, a grieving father has a powerful message for you. Richie Gray has to live with a terrible reality each day. He mistakenly left his 1-year-old daughter Sophie inside a hot car. He shares his family's heartbreak in the hopes of helping another parent from making this same tragic mistake.
An epidemic of children dying in hot cars: a tragedy that can be prevented
I have been studying the brain and memory since 1980, but I was baffled when a news reporter asked me in 2004 how parents can forget that their children are in the car with them. It seemed incomprehensible that parents could leave a child in a car and then go about their daily activities, as their child dies of hyperthermia in a car that reaches scorching temperatures.
