Children’s hot-car deaths get new look in research
Memory system blamed; child safety alarm sought
Miles Harrison does the same thing every morning. At 5 a.m., before the sun rises, he sits at his desk with a jar of dirt from his baby’s grave.
He puts his fingers in the dirt and talks to his son, Chase Dmitri Harrison, who died July 8, 2008.
That morning, 11 years ago, Harrison walked into work.
“At about five o’clock, one of my colleagues comes up to me and pokes his head in my office and says, ‘Hey, do you have a doll in your car?’ ”
He had forgotten his 1/1⁄2-year-old in his truck.
Harrison and his wife, Carol, adopted Chase from Russia in March of that year. July 8, Harrison told USA TODAY, was the second or third day he was scheduled to go to day care. It was the first day Harrison intended to drop him off.
He ran to the car and saw an outline through tinted windows. He ripped Chase from the car seat and ran around the parking lot with his son’s body in his arms. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” he shouted. “Take me, not him.”
Harrison would join a sad fraternity of parents whose children have died as temperatures skyrocket inside locked cars during summer months.
More than 900 children have died in hot cars in the U.S. since 1990. Yearly, 38 die on average, according to KidsAndCars.org, which tracks hot-car deaths.
In recent weeks, four children died in hot cars: twins in the Bronx, whose father says he forgot them in the car; a Florida toddler left in a day care van; and a baby girl found in a hot vehicle at a car wash in Texas.
Their deaths bring this year’s death toll to 25.
KidsAndCars.org seeks to pass bipartisan legislation in Congress that would require all new passenger motor vehicles to include a child safety alarm.
Janette Fennell, founder of KidsAnd Cars.org, said the organization is trying to get a driver reminder system added to vehicles since 2003. The group’s efforts included language in other bills, which was stripped, and the Hot Cars Act of 2017, which was attached to another bill. Neither passed.
The safety bill would require that cars have both an audio and visual alert that may be combined with a vibration warning, activating when the engine is shut off.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., is a co-sponsor of the bill. He said he decided to get involved in 2014 after a 15month-old died in a hot car in his state.
“A dad simply forgot that his child was in the back seat of the car, much like what happened in New York,” Blumenthal said.
These deaths can be prevented with alert systems in the vehicle that remind parents to “look before you lock,” he said.
Some automobile manufacturers, including GM and Hyundai, Blumenthal said, are already making these devices standard equipment.
“No automobile maker can complain that it is either unaffordable or unachievable,” Blumenthal said. “It is a matter of pennies and it will save children.”