Placing a personal item in the back seat as an extra, physical reminder can help prevent child deaths in hot cars, experts in vehicle safety who track such incidents suggest.
>> RELATED: Baby dies after being left in hot car while parents attend church
With temperatures in the Miami Valley this week expected to remain in the 90s, the inside of a car can become a deadly place in minutes. For example, on a 90-degree day, the temperature inside a car after just 10 minutes can reach 109 degrees.
And unfortunately, tragedies have and continue to happen involving children left in the back seat of vehicles:
◊ 14 children in the United States have died in hot cars so far in 2023, according to noheatstroke.org.
◊ 33 children in the United States left in hot cars in 2022 died of heat stroke, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports.
Children are especially at risk because their body temperatures rise five times faster than adults, according to NHTSA, whose experts suggest placing a personal item in the back seat as an extra, physical reminder to check that part of the car.
“I just don’t forget them. I know I have kids,” Kimberly Fisher, of Riverside, told John Bedell, News Center 7 I-Team investigative reporter. “I don’t see how that can happen because even when you look our rear view mirror . . . you can see your kid’s back there. You can hear your kids.”
According to data gathered by NHTSA, noheatstroke.org and other organizations that chart hot car incidents involving children, tragedies often happen when mom or dad or another care giver is out of their routine, such as taking a child to daycare when they normally are not the one to do so.
>> RELATED: FCC rule enables technology to prevent child deaths in hot cars
There are federal guidelines in the works that will require all new cars to come equipped with a back-seat alert system aimed at preventing hot-car deaths.
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