Idaho infant's death is the latest hot car-related fatality in US
The tragic death is the 24th juvenile hot car fatality reported in the U.S. so far this year and one more than the 23 that were recorded in 2021.
As sweltering heat continues to spread across the western United States, police are investigating the death of a baby girl in a hot car in southwestern Idaho.
In New Plymouth, a city located about 50 miles northwest of Boise, authorities say they were called at about 5 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 3, by a family who said their child had been left in the car and was unresponsive, according to The Associated Press. Emergency responders took the child to a nearby hospital, where she was later pronounced dead. She was less than a year old.
The cause of death is still under investigation by the Payette County Sheriff's Office and the Idaho State Police. So far in 2022 there have been 24 recorded juvenile hot car deaths in the U.S., which is one more than the amount for all of 2021, according to the nonprofit National Safety Council. Since 1998, on average, 38 children under the age of 15 die each year from heatstroke after being left in a car unattended. The highest number of juvenile hot car deaths reported in a year is 53, a grim mark that was reached in both 2018 and 2019.
This is the first hot car death for Idaho this year, according to Kids and Car Safety, a national nonprofit child safety organization. The state ranks 31st in the nation for child hot car deaths with at least nine such fatalities between 1995 and 2017.
"What's important for people to understand is that literally a car becomes an oven within minutes of it being closed, especially during the extreme temperatures that we are experiencing right now," Amber Rollins, director of Kids and Car Safety, previously told AccuWeather. "And the other important thing for people to know is that it doesn't have to be a super hot day outside for a child to suffer heatstroke in a vehicle."
The high in New Plymouth was a scorching 100 degrees Saturday. When a child is trapped in a car, the vehicle's windows act almost like a greenhouse by trapping heat inside, even when the air is comparatively quite cool. So when the outdoor temperatures are in the triple digits, severe injury can occur quickly, Rollins said.
Kids and Car Safety advocates for technology that can detect an unattended child as standard for all cars. A provision was passed last year as a part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which requires the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to issue a regulation by November 2023 for technology in all new cars to help prevent hot car deaths in the form of an audio-visual alert in the car. However, there is no requirement for the kind of detection technology that Kids and Car Safety describes. There are aftermarket devices that address this issue, and even Hyundai and Kia offer it as an option in some SUVs.
“We are committed to the push for occupant detection technology in all cars immediately. As we continue our advocacy, children continue to die week after week. It is beyond heartbreaking," Janette Fennell, founder and president of Kids and Car Safety, said in a press statement. "Automakers do not have to wait for the regulation to be issued requiring technology; they can add occupant detection technology to their vehicles today. An occupant detection and alert system could have gotten assistance to this sweet angel before it was too late.”
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