Every year the return of hot weather replays a story that is no less disturbing for being retold: horrific incidents of infants and toddlers being left alone in hot cars to die.
And although the risks and causes of these hyperthermia deaths are well known, the tragic mishap has occurred 25 times across the country so far this year - more times by this date than in any year since records began being kept in 1998. Eight of those deaths occurred in Texas, most for any state and nearly a third of the national total. Since 1998, Texas has the dubious distinction of reporting more vehicle heat-related fatalities - 66 - than any other state.
Last month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued a consumer advisory to alert drivers to be more aware of the risk. We all need to do our part to share this critical NHTSA message. If you ever discover an unattended child in a car, dial 911 immediately. Emergency medical professionals know how to determine whether a child is in trouble, but if a child is clearly distressed, be prepared to break a window as a last resort. Distress signs can include red, hot and moist or dry skin; no sweating; strange behavior; nausea or vomiting. The child must be cooled as rapidly as possible.
In more than 50 percent of incidents a distracted adult caregiver - often a parent - is the person responsible for leaving a child alone in a stifling car. The fact that it is almost always accidental does not lessen the sense of guilt, shame, recrimination and remorse.
If you are looking for a common description of the kind of caregiver these tragedies are likely to strike, there is none. It happens to mothers and fathers, rich and poor, highly educated and less educated and city dwellers and suburbanites. In the last 12 years, at least 470 child vehicular hyperthermia deaths have occurred across the country according to statistics compiled by Jan Null of San Francisco State University.
"Couldn't happen to me," you say? Of course, that's what every parent says, including those who go on to experience it at some later date. It is an inexplicable error of the human brain.
But it is preventable.
Call it a result of distraction or multi-tasking or stress. Somehow the mind shifts to another channel and stays there until the tragic discovery is made. The key then is to create safeguards to interrupt that channel shift.
Here are some tactics that work: place something that you must take with you in the back seat near the child carrier. It could be your BlackBerry or cell phone, purse, briefcase, gym bag, umbrella or whatever it is that you must take with you from the car. That way when you open the rear door and reach for your belongings, you can't miss seeing the child.
Establish a plan with your day-care provider to call immediately if your child is late for day care. Set your cell phone or BlackBerry to prompt you to be sure you dropped your child off. Program your computer calendar to pop up an alert, "Did you drop off at daycare today?" Write yourself a sticky note and paste it where you will see it when you get out of the vehicle. Make it a point never to leave a child alone in a vehicle, even with the windows down.
Not every case is caused by an adult forgetting that a child is in the back seat. Sometimes unattended toddlers climb into an unlocked vehicle on their own and cannot get out, unable to open the doors by themselves. It takes only a few minutes for a child to be at risk of dying or suffering severe, permanent injury in a closed car where the temperature can soar to more than 140 degrees. Infants' and toddlers' bodies handle heat poorly because of their immature respiratory and circulatory systems, meaning that lethal heat stroke can occur faster for them than for adults.
Prevention is key in this situation as well. Car owners should keep car doors locked and keys out of reach of young children. Toddlers should be supervised at all times and should be taught that motor vehicles are not for play.
The bottom line is that most of these tragedies can be
avoided. With vigilance - and such a little change of routine
as putting your cell phone on your back seat - we can save
children's lives.
Dr. Pat Crocker, Chief of Emergency Medicine at
Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas
Mitchell R. Stroller, President and Chief Executive Officer, Safe Kids Worldwide