Consumers Beware! Why you should never leave a child alone in a car

Leaving a child alone in a car is fraught with danger. If the car is locked with all the windows closed, the child runs the risk of suffering severe heat stroke, as cars heat up very quickly and children are extremely susceptible to heat. If you keep the engine idling, with the key in the ignition and the air-conditioner running, your child can get kidnapped, or your car may get stolen, along with the child.

A couple in Kerala learnt this the hard way when their car got stolen, along with their toddler in the backseat, in January this year. On their way to a relative’s house in Kozhikode, the couple stopped at a bakery. Their child was sleeping at the back, so they left the car engine idling to keep the air-conditioning on and stepped out to buy a few items. To their horror, their car was stolen, along with the child at the back! Fortunately for them, it all ended on a happy note — the thief was caught and the child, abandoned after two hours on the roadside, was picked up safe and sound!

There was an almost identical incident in Delhi last June. Here, the couple left their two kids — an 11-year-old girl and her three-year-old brother — in the car, with the AC running, while they went into a confectionery shop in East Delhi. When they returned, they found their car stolen, along with the children. After a three-hour police chase involving 20 police vehicles, the culprits abandoned the vehicle and the children too.

One may find it hard to believe, but there are innumerable instances of parents, and in some cases a grandparent, leaving behind a sleeping child in the car by mistake. There are also cases of parents leaving a child behind in the car while going on a short errand, believing the car to be a safe place. With the windows up and the car locked, the temperature inside the car goes up so quickly that a child is unable to withstand it.

In May last year, a couple from Kota district, Rajasthan, lost their three-year-old daughter to vehicular hyperthermia. The parents were going to a wedding with their two daughters and when the father stopped the car in front of the venue, his wife and the elder daughter exited. The father presumed that all three had left and so parked and locked the car and went in, leaving the sleeping child behind. By the time they realised that three-year-old Gorvika was missing and went to get her, it was too late.

In another tragic incident on October 30, three-year-old Vartika became a victim of heat stroke in a locked car in Meerut. In this case, it was not her parents, but a colleague of her father who took her for a ride in the car and then left her in the parked car, planning to return shortly. The heat inside the car killed the child.

There are several websites that help you calculate the temperature inside a car at different ambient temperatures. When the outside temperature is 30ºC, for example, the temperature inside a car goes up to almost 50ºC (48.89 ºC, to be precise) in just 30 minutes! In 15 minutes, it hovers over 43ºC. Eighty per cent of the temperature rise, it is estimated, occurs within the first half an hour. A study published in March 2009 in the International Journal of Meteorology reveals that even on cloudy days with lower ambient air temperatures, the temperatures inside a car can reach dangerous levels.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the United States says that a child’s body temperature rises three to five times faster than an adult’s and heat stroke occurs when the body temperature reaches 104ºF (40ºC). A child can die when it reaches 107ºF (41.6ºC).

Cars seem to hold a special attraction for children when it comes to playtime and that’s how many of them enter the vehicle and get trapped when the doors automatically get locked. In Kochi, Kerala, two-year-old Rithick got inside his father’s car parked in front of the house and locked himself up by pressing the lock button on the key. The parents did not have the spare key and eventually had to call the Fire and Rescue Services to get the child out — the entire process took 45 minutes early in the morning and the child was traumatised inside. There was a similar incident in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, in July. Here, the parents were lucky but there are many unfortunate cases where the children are found too late.

In November, four siblings, aged 2-7 years, died in a car in Radadiya village in Gujarat’s Amreli district. The parents had gone to work on a farm and the children got into the car of the farm owner and were unable to get out when the doors automatically locked. By the time they were found, all had succumbed to heat stroke.

Earlier, in May, a three-year-old girl in Bhadradri Kothagudem district in Telangana met the same fate when she accidentally got locked inside a car parked in front of her house. The same month, six-year-old Kaunen and his four-year-old cousin Abdullah, playing in the compound of their house in Raebareli district in Uttar Pradesh, got into a parked SUV and got locked. Heat stroke claimed their lives.

A month prior to that, two children reported missing by their parents in Central Mumbai were found dead in an abandoned car parked in Antop Hill.

So, never leave a child alone in a car, even for a short time, and if you are the forgetful type, keep a paper reminding you of the child at the back, pasted on the windshield! Make sure that any child that enters a car exits safely. Always keep your car locked and store the key in a place where children cannot access it.

— The writer is a consumer rights and safety expert