Another North Texas infant has died after being left in a hot car yesterday. This is so terribly tragic, so utterly predictable, and so completely preventable. It’s summer in Texas, people. It gets hot. Yesterday was about 105 degrees. That’s in the shade. The interior of a car in the sun will be much, much hotter than the official temperature. Kids (and even some adults) simply cannot survive sitting in an unventilated vehicle in that kind of heat. Yesterday was the 17th day so far this summer that the official temperature in Dallas has been 100 degrees or higher, and today will be the 18th. We’ll have plenty more to come this year.
This is the second child in a week to die this way, and there will probably be others before the summer ends. We see the same thing every single year. Yes, we’re all busy, we all have other things on our minds, but please, use your head – don’t forget that you have a child in the back seat.
Here are some safety tips from KidsandCars.org:
- Make a habit of checking the back seat when getting out of a vehicle, whether a child is there or not.
- Put a stuffed animal in the front seat to remind you when a child is in the back seat.
- Place items that are needed for work—such as a cell phone, purse or briefcase — in the floorboard of the back seat so that the child will be noticed when retrieving the items.
- Ask school and child-care workers to call if the child hasn’t arrived as planned.
- Use drive-through or pay-at-the-pump services when available to eliminate the temptation to leave a child in the car while running an errand.
