With Treasure Coast temperatures feeling like 110 degrees this summer, a national child safety nonprofit is reminding parents, caregivers and bystanders that there is no safe amount of time to leave a child alone in a vehicle.
Chloe Burke, Data Manager for Kids and Car Safety, said the organization has spent nearly 30 years collecting data most government agencies don't track.
"Kids and Cars Safety is the leading national nonprofit organization that's dedicated to saving the lives of children and pets in and around motor vehicles," Burke said. "We have been the only national organization dedicated to the collection of non-traffic data for about 30 years."
That means tracking incidents that happen off public roads — in driveways and parking lots — including backovers, frontovers, heatstroke, power window strangulation, trunk entrapment and vehicles left in gear.
Burke said the biggest obstacle to prevention isn't ignorance about hot car dangers — it's the belief that they only happen to other people.
"The majority of parents and caregivers are generally misinformed in that they believe that they would never forget their child in a vehicle," Burke said. "That's honestly the most dangerous message that a parent or caregiver can make is to think that leaving a child alone in a vehicle could never happen to them or their family."
Nationally, roughly 40 children die in hot cars each year — about one every nine days — and 86% of those children are age 3 or younger, according to Kids and Car Safety data.
Burke said more than half of those cases happen when parents unknowingly leave a child in the vehicle, and that a change in routine or a distraction is often enough to put a caregiver's brain on autopilot.
About 45% of children unknowingly left in a vehicle were supposed to be dropped off at daycare that day.
"Say mom or dad typically takes the child to daycare, and then parent B, who typically doesn't do it, is on call to take the child to daycare that day," Burke said. "When you get in the car, that basal ganglia — a portion of your brain — kicks in, and autopilot kicks in. Parents drive straight to work."
A sleeping child makes no sound, Burke said, and a rear-facing car seat looks the same whether it's empty or not.
Burke laid out several low-cost safeguards families can build into their routines:
- Keep keys and key fobs out of reach of children, even before they're old enough to walk.
- Leave a stuffed animal in the back seat. When a child is buckled in, move the toy to the front seat as a visual and physical reminder. When the trip ends, toss it back.
- Look before you lock. Check the back seat, floorboards, third row and trunk every time you get out of the car — then lock the doors. Burke said about a quarter of the cases KACS collects involve children who got into an unlocked vehicle on their own.
- Use another visual cue, such as leaving a work badge or a shoe in the back seat — anything that forces a second glance before walking away.