Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Bill targets kids alone in hot cars
Springs mayor, state lawmakers want to prohibit the practice altogether
It’s illegal to leave a child unattended for 16 minutes or longer in a hot car in Florida.
But 15 minutes is a whole different story.
Under Florida law, leaving a child in a car for a shorter period of time is legal as long as the car’s engine is turned off.
Now, the mayor of Coral Springs and state legislators are pushing for a bill that tightens the law to safeguard children.
“Fifteen minutes is an awfully long time,” Mayor Skip Campbell said.
State Rep. Emily Slosberg, D-Boca Raton, agreed with Campbell and on Monday began working on a bill that would prohibit anyone from leaving a child unattended in a hot car for any period of time.
Her amendment “would remove that time period to zero,” she said. “It’s incredibly hot. They shouldn’t be leaving them in the car for any time period. It makes no sense to arbitrarily put 15 minutes there.”
Campbell became focused on the issue of kids in hot cars after a 6-month-old baby girl re-
cently was left strapped in a hot car in his city, he said.
Campbell went shopping for tennis balls on the afternoon of July 8 at Dick’s Sporting Goods, when he saw the child belted into her car seat in a 2007 Scion parked outside.
The Scion’s windows were down 1 inch, and there was no water in the child’s cup, according to a Coral Springs police report. The baby could have been dehydrated or injured “if left alone any longer,” police said. Firefighters unlocked the car and removed the girl, who was crying and whose hair was wet from sweat, police said.
The baby was fine, police said.
After police waited 20 minutes for the father to come out of the sporting goods store, they went inside to look for him, according to the report. The father “was almost in tears,” said Coral Springs Police Capt. Brad McKeone said.
The father was cited for leaving a child unattended in a vehicle, a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine maximum.
Weeks after the incident, Campbell said it is “definitely something that I still think about.”
Campbell, who served in the state Senate from 1996 to 2006, decided more could be done to strengthen the laws on kids in hot cars.
Currently, it’s illegal to leave a child younger than 6 years old unattended for any time if the car is running, but a child can be left alone for 15 minutes or less if the engine is off.
“The 15-minute provision should not exist,” said Janette E. Fennell, founder of Philadelphia-based KidsAndCars.org, an organization that promotes child car safety. “By saying 15 minutes, you are authorizing or telling people ‘15 is OK, 16 is not OK.’ It should be zero.”
Slosberg’s amendment would make it illegal, regardless of the duration of time the child is left in the car, and regardless of whether the engine is turned on or off.
Fennell, who tracks laws and statistics nationwide and advocates for children, said four of the 26 hot-car deaths so far this year across the country have been in Florida. Since the 1990s, 82 children in Florida have died from being left in hot cars, according to the organization.
Among some recent South Florida hot-car deaths:
■ In Delray Beach, a toddler died July 15 after he became trapped for two hours inside a BMW parked outside a home, police said.
■ A 1-year-old boy died in February after being left in a car outside a house in Miami-Dade’s Pinecrest community.
State Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Coral Springs, said he, too, is willing to review the law at Campbell’s request.
He sponsored a bill in 2016 that provides immunity from civil liability for damage, such as a broken window, for anyone rescuing a trapped person or pet from a hot car.
He’d be in favor of looking at creating harsher penalties for anyone found guilty of leaving a child in a hot car.
“You are putting your child’s life at risk, and it needs to be punished like you’re putting your child’s life at risk,” Moskowitz said.