Locked In: Why Child Car Deaths Are on the Rise

As predictable as the tinkling of the ice cream truck and the thrum of air conditioners is a more macabre sign of summer’s arrival: the beginning of news reports detailing some parent, somewhere, whose child died after being locked in a hot car. A decade ago, we would have considered an occurrence like this a freak accident; now there’s an average of one such death per week in the months between spring and autumn.

Child deaths by hyperthermia have been on the rise since the early ’90s, when new safety regulations mandated that children, often injured by front-seat, passenger-side airbags, should always ride in the backseat. No one disputes that children are indeed safest in the backseat; the laws did successfully reduce airbag injuries to kids, but they also inadvertently made children less visible in the car, and they’re one of the factors often cited to explain the eightfold increase in hyperthermia deaths since the regulations passed. According to nonprofit consumer-safety advocates Kids and Cars, an average of thirty-seven children have died this way each year since 1998. In the first six months of 2010 alone, twenty kids lost their lives after parents left them in cars unintentionally.

Just as predictable as the grisly news reports are the reactions from other parents, invariably wondering, What kind of parent would do a thing like that?

“The thing people should understand is that this could happen to anyone,” says Janette Fennell, founder and president of Kids and Cars. The parents who make these terrible mistakes have little in common in their personal lives: some are blue-collar, some are executives, some are mothers, and some are fathers. They’re people that would otherwise be described as loving and competent parents. “This isn’t about a lack of love,” says Fennell, “it’s about our brains not functioning the way we want them to.”

A “Mis-remembering”
In the human brain, the basal ganglia (sometimes called the reptilian brain) is responsible for our day-to-day tasks, repetitive actions, and habits. It allows us to go through the motions of driving to work without consciously considering each turn or action, thereby delegating the responsibilities of conscious thought and decision making to the more evolved prefrontal cortex. Ordinarily, these systems work together seamlessly to delegate tasks, but under stress, the basal ganglia tends to take over like an autopilot. What parents who end up leaving their children in cars have in common is that they tend to be under stress and have experienced a significant change in their daily routine. Perhaps it’s not their usual day to drop the child off at daycare, or perhaps they were distracted by a pressing work call. Even something as simple as a detour on the highway can cause the prefrontal cortex to cede control to the basal ganglia. Conscious thought is disrupted, and the parent drives to work on autopilot, oblivious to the quietly sleeping child in the backseat.

According to data compiled by Kids and Cars, about 33 percent of children in these cases are under age one. For new parents, these circumstances can be disastrous. “There [are] hormone changes, lack of sleep, and change in routine,” says Fennell. “All these things going on in the first year of life are stacked against you.” Her organization works with many parents who have lost a child this way, and she characterizes the memory lapse as a “mis-remembering.” “They have a total and concrete memory of dropping the baby off,” she says.

Protect Your Kids, Protect Yourself
Fennell’s organization has compiled a list of easy steps parents can take to try to lessen the risk of experiencing this excruciating lapse in memory:

Put something important in the backseat, on the floor in front of where the child sits—a purse, a cell phone, an office identification badge—so that you’re forced to look in the backseat. “Get in the habit of opening the door every time you get out of the car,” Fennell says.
Keep a large stuffed animal in the car seat when it’s empty, and whenever there’s a child in the car, put the animal in the front seat. “It gives us that visual reminder that if the animal’s up front, the baby’s in the back,” she explains.
Make arrangements with your child’s daycare provider or caregiver to ensure that any time the child does not arrive when he or she is expected, the caregiver should immediately call you. Fennell also advises giving caregivers a list of absolutely anyone—spouse, grandparents, friends—whom they could call to verify your child’s whereabouts.
Although increased parental vigilance is important, Fennell believes that the solution lies in requiring auto manufacturers to include safety features that can warn if a child is left in the seat. “Our cars tell us if the key is in the ignition, if gas is getting low, or if the headlights are on,” she says. “Somehow we’ve decided it’s more important not to have a dead car battery than a dead baby.” Kids and Cars sponsored the Cameron Gulbransen Kids and Cars Safety Act, passed by Congress in 2008, which requires auto manufacturers to maintain safety standards for power windows, brakes, and rear visibility but does not require simple measures like seat-belt sensors for all positions, or weight sensors under seats that would sound an alarm if the car is locked with someone in the seat. The technology for these safety features already exists, but there’s no current plan to require carmakers to install them in new cars. “No one’s doing anything, and if they are, they’re not talking about it,” says Fennell. “They probably won’t unless it’s mandated.”

Because so many people attribute these tragic lapses to bad judgment or incompetent parenting, there’s little public support for laws requiring increased safety standards. People continue to believe that it could never happen to them, but Fennell’s organization is working to remind people that leaving a child in a car isn’t just a mistake delinquent or negligent parents make; it could happen—and has happened—to anyone. “Do you think any of these parents thought they were capable of forgetting their child?” asks Fennell. “No way.”

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