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| It is NEVER OK to leave a small child in a car…
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| but frazzled parents forget
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Deaths of children due to overheating in cars still are all too frequent occurrence in Australia, with one recently reported to have occurred outside a Victoria Family Day Care. The mother of the 22-month-old boy, Noah, was believed to have forgotten to drop him off earlier at another child care facility. The poor mother was utterly distraught and will no doubt never get over her mistake.
This sort of tragic accident is simply too awful to even contemplate. Police say that all too often it's not down to neglect. These incidents invariably involve loving and otherwise responsible parents or carers. But simple forgetfulness or confusion by parents or carers who are doing multiple drop offs with multiple children sometimes means they simply don't even realise a child is still in the car.
In the 24 hours after the body of Noah was found in February, emergency services responded to four separate cases of children being locked in cars in Melbourne alone. All were rescued and unharmed, but since the start of the year, there have been just over 280 cases of children being locked in cars in Victoria – an average of almost six a day.
We may be out of summer now, but autumn temperatures around the country can still reach the high twenties or even 30C, easily hot enough to cause the death of a child within only a few minutes.
Heatstroke occurs when a person's temperature exceeds 40C and their thermoregulatory mechanism is overwhelmed. A core body temperature of 41.67C or greater can be lethal as cells are damaged and internal organs begin to shut down.
Children's thermoregulatory systems are not as efficient as an adult's and their body temperatures warm at a rate 3 to 5 times faster than an adult's.
Heatstroke symptoms include: dizziness, disorientation, agitation, confusion, sluggishness, seizure, hot dry skin that is flushed but not sweaty, loss of consciousness, rapid heartbeat and/or hallucinations.
The atmosphere and the windows of a car are relatively "transparent" to the sun's shortwave radiation, but this shortwave energy heats objects that it strikes. For example, a dark dashboard or seat can easily reach temperatures in the range of 180 to over 200 degrees F.
These objects (e.g., dashboard, steering wheel, child seat) heat the adjacent air by conduction and convection and also give off longwave radiation that is very efficient at warming the air trapped inside a vehicle.
Ambulance Victoria tests found that even on a 29-degree day the inside of a car can reach 44 degrees within 10 minutes, and 60 degrees within 20 minutes.
So what can we do to avoid this?
Clearly you should simply NEVER ever intentionally leave a small child in a car. Not for any reason or any length of time.
You may only be popping over the road to the post office, but people get distracted, things happen, you could have an accident, get hit by a car and no one would know your baby was still inside your own car. Things like this do happen. People don't intend to leave their babies to overheat, they just do.
Cars have dangerous equipment. Children left to play in them is never a good idea. Things get tampered with. Even seatbelts represent a potential strangulation danger. You just don't know what your children can get up to in a car. They might see something or get scared on their own and simply get out of it and wander off or onto a road. Children, even sensible ones, do stupid things.
And then there's risk of abduction – intentional or otherwise. Cars with children in the back have been stolen on many occasions. Children also get stolen from cars – locked or unlocked. Where there's a will, there's a way.
The Victoria incident has raised questions as to how to limit the possibilities of foul play, neglect or forgetfulness of parents by alerting the parent's phone if a child has not been dropped off at child care. This sounds like an obvious solution, although it may still be too late by the time registration is taken.
Schools do often call parents if children do not register and a parent has not called in to say they are sick. It's not to hassle you, but to check that your child is with you and OK. But this won't be done until after registration.
So we've established that we should never knowingly leave a child in a car.
But how do you avoid never unknowingly leaving a child in a car? In our busy lives people, children, phone calls or events taking place around us are constant distractions. It's easy to lose concentration and forget what you're doing for a minute.
How often have you walked into a room in your house and can't remember what you went in there for? How often have you left a tap running by mistake, burnt a dinner, forgot to shut the front door? One of my friends got all the way to school before she realised baby number 3 was still in his car pod outside the back door… it's SO ridiculously easy to do.
- Try to develop a way to always check, such as getting into the habit of always putting your handbag, purse or phone by your baby's seat or in the back of the car. You'll rarely leave your purse in the car, so doing this will help you remember.
- Develop a chant or a routine similar to mirror, signal, manoeuvre or slip slop slap when you get out of your car. KEY CHECK CLICK.
- If it helps, just put a large note on your dashboard. CHECK BACK SEAT!
All this sounds completely daft, but it might just save your child.
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