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A parent’s lapse can be fatal in the summer heat

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Special to The Times

As summer approaches and temperatures soar across the country, parents and caregivers need to be vigilant in preventing heat-related deaths of children trapped or accidentally left in vehicles.

Last year, a record 42 children died nationwide after being left in cars, trucks and vans. Since 1996, more than 200 children have died in this manner across the United States, according to Janette Fennell, president of Kids and Cars, an auto safety advocacy group that has been tracking such incidents.

Many of these tragedies occur when frazzled parents on their way to work or struggling with hectic schedules forget the child is in the vehicle, Fennell says.

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Though some find it hard to fathom how a parent could forget a child in a vehicle, Fennell and other child safety advocates say it has happened to the best of parents. “Many of these parents are educated, loving and were devoted to their children.”

This year, three children have already perished from being left alone in sweltering cars. Disturbed by the growing number of such deaths, Fennell suspects that simple parent inattentiveness is not the only factor in children being left in vehicles.

She notes that, for safety reasons, many parents place their children in rear-facing seats in the back seat, rather than the front seat, putting children out of sight. And if the child is seated far back in a large SUV, the parent may be even more likely to forget the child.

In 1991, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began encouraging parents to put their children in the back seat to prevent them from being injured if the air bags deploy. As a result, the number of air bag injuries involving children has decreased, according to NHTSA spokeswoman Liz Neblet.

But statistics appear to indicate that “we have now lost more children to heat-related deaths than from air bag incidents,” Fennell says.

Even if that’s true, Neblet says, the NHTSA still believes the safest place for a child is in the back seat. “We don’t want people to be putting them in the front seat just so they remember to pull them out,” she says. “If they aren’t remembering to take their child out of the back seat, I would not blame it on an air bag.”

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UC Irvine professor Mark Warschauer’s son Michael died last summer when he unintentionally left the sleeping child in his car when he went to work. By all accounts, Warschauer was a devoted parent, and the Orange County district attorney’s office determined the incident was an accident.

Since his son’s death, Warschauer and his wife, Keiko Hirata, have been active in educating families on how to prevent this kind of tragedy. They have also joined Kids and Cars and other safety advocates in supporting federal legislation to require the NHTSA to collect data on heat-related deaths and encourage the auto industry to acquire technology that would alert parents if a child was left in a vehicle.

“Of course it’s parents’ responsibility to take care of their children,” says Warschauer, who notes that buzzers and lights alert drivers about seat belt use. “Certainly we could have a safety device to remind you if you left a child in the car.”

Fennell says many people don’t understand how quickly a closed vehicle can heat up. A recent study by Jan Null, a meteorologist and adjunct professor at San Francisco State, found that the temperature in a car can rise 19 degrees within 10 minutes.

In August, a 2-year-old Ontario girl was treated for heat exhaustion after she was found slouched over in a locked car in Corona. The child had been in the vehicle for only about 15 minutes. The temperature outside was about 100 degrees at the time. A passerby broke a window and rescued the girl while her mother was shopping. Authorities said the temperature inside the car was 122 degrees 10 minutes after the window had been broken.

“Parents and caregivers need to get the word that a car is not a baby sitter ... but it can easily become an oven,” Null says.

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Some tips to prevent tragedy

Among experts’ suggestions on keeping children safe:

Always put something -- cellphone, briefcase, purse -- in the back seat that you will need to retrieve when you get out. It will guarantee that you’ll open the back door and see your child.

Keep a large teddy bear in the child’s car seat when no one’s in it. When the child is placed in the car seat, bring the teddy bear up front as a reminder that your child is in the back seat.

Warn children not to play in or around vehicles. Always lock car doors and trunks and keep keys out of children’s reach.

Keep rear fold-down seats closed to help prevent children from getting into the trunk from the passenger area of a vehicle.

Jeanne Wright can be reached at Jeanrite@aol.com.

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