Media Advisory June 6, 2000 Contact: Janette E. Fennell
(415) 789-1000
KIDS 'N CARS™ Warns Parents Not to Leave Children Unattended in Motor Vehicles
At Least Nine Deaths, 17 Nonfatal Incidents So Far This Year
Washington, DC ... With the heat of summer approaching, advocates for children's safety today issued an urgent warning to parents and care givers: Never leave children unattended in or around vehicles, in which they can die from heat stroke, become trapped or cause crashes.
Citing nine child deaths already this year, even before the hottest months, the nonprofit organization KIDS 'N CARS announced a nationwide advertising campaign to alert parents to the dangers of leaving children alone in vehicles. Last year, at least 30 children died from heat exposure after being left alone; 25 of those deaths occurred during the June, July and August.
At a press conference, the group also released a study that documented and examined the circumstances of 107 child heat-related deaths related in vehicles since 1990.
"These tragic deaths are entirely preventable," said Janette E. Fennell of San Francisco, cofounder of KIDS 'N CARS. "Parents should never, never leave children unattended in or around a vehicle. Cars are inappropriate places for children to be left without adult supervision. A car is not a toy, a car is not a playground, and a car is certainly not a babysitter."
While heat stroke is a primary concern in the summer, unattended children also can get into serious trouble around vehicles in numerous other ways, such as getting locked in the trunk, putting the car into motion or even being inadvertently kidnapped by car thieves. In Missouri this past February, 6-year-old Jake Robel was dragged to his death after a convicted felon stole the car in which he had been left alone outside a store. Any child left alone in a vehicle should be considered in danger.
"What does it take for people to wake up and understand that leaving kids alone in cars is a tragedy waiting to happen?" said Michele Struttmann of Washington, Mo., cofounder of KIDS 'N CARS. "You would think these tragedies would be a wake-up call to the American public."
Struttmann knows the dangers first-hand. In 1998, her 2-year-old son Harrison was killed because "other parents carelessly left their children alone in a van with the motor running," Struttmann said. The children knocked the van into gear and hit Struttmann and her son as they were sitting on a bench in their favorite park watching boats on the Missouri River. Struttmann continues to suffer physically after the 11 surgeries she has endured to gain the strength to fight for the safety of other children.
Anara Guard, information director for Safetytips.com, shared the findings of her recent study describing the heat-related deaths of children left unattended in or around vehicles since 1990. Of the 82 cases involving passenger compartments, one-fourth of the deaths were due to children, mostly toddlers, who climbed into the cars on their own. In three-fourths of the cases, adults left children in vehicles, either knowingly or unknowingly. In addition, one out of five children were in the care of day-care providers, day-care van drivers or babysitters.
So far this year the following deaths have been documented:
June 1, a young boy died after being left sleeping in a car in New Jersey.
May 26, 5-month-old twin sisters were left in a parked car while their grandmother helped a friend with a garage sale. When the grandmother went to check on them, the sisters were unresponsive. One died that day and her twin sister died two days later.
May 24, a 4-year-old Phoenix boy died of hyperthermia after he climbed into a closed car and was unable to get out. Three of the car's four inside door handles were missing.
May 23, a 4-year-old boy was pronounced dead at a Farmington, Maine, hospital after being struck by a vehicle in his own driveway. The child was pinned between two vehicles after a younger child got in one vehicle and got started it.
May 18, a 9-month-old Virginia boy died in the backseat of the family car after his father forgot to drop the infant off at a daycare center.
March 10, a 16-month-old Florida boy died after he was left in a day-care van for six hours.
Feb. 23, 6-year-old Jake Robel was dragged to his death after a convicted felon stole the car in which he had been left alone outside a store.
Feb. 21, a 3-year-old child died while trying to climb through a car window. Her 15-year-old babysitter was asleep on the couch when the child's mother came home to find her child hanging from the car window.
KIDS 'N CARS is building the only national database to record incidents involving children aged 15 and younger who were left alone in or around a vehicle. More than 1,000 cases that involved injury or death have been documented so far from: heat stroke, being struck by the vehicle, children being hit by vehicles backing up, children choking while alone in a car, by being kidnapped, toxic fumes, activation of automatic power controls, and entrapment in car trunks.
The KIDS 'N CARS media campaign, which is being funded by General Mills, will include a series of three public service announcements that will be sent to 2,000 radio stations nationwide. It also will include safety messages that will be sent to 10,000 US newspapers.
