Is it ever okay to leave a child in the car alone?

This has been a popular topic for discussion among parents since a mom in Illinois was arrested for leaving her sleeping 2-year-old for a few minutes in a locked, alarmed car. The punishment certainly seemed extreme (charges were later dropped), but it definitely made a lot of parents think about this issue.

First of all, let’s look at the law. At present, 11 states have laws against leaving a child alone in a car. In Washington, it is a misdemeanor to leave a child under the age of 16 in a car while the motor is running. Subsequent violations could even cause one’s driver’s license to be revoked.

According to the Center for Disease Control’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report from 2002, between July 2000 and June 2001, there were 9,160 non-fatal injuries and 78 fatal injuries among children up to age 14 who were left unattended in or around motor vehicles. This doesn’t include vehicles in traffic. The most common fatal incident was exposure to heat inside a vehicle (hyperthermia), followed by being backed over by a vehicle. About 82 percent of these injuries occurred in children less than 4 years old, and 50 percent occurred near the child’s own home.

There have been a myriad of other injuries – from kids getting trapped in the trunk, getting out of their car seats and putting the vehicle in gear or falling out of the car, to getting their arm, head or neck trapped in an automatic window when playing with the buttons.

Also, cars with kids inside have been stolen – the car and the kids! “Kids ‘N Cars”, a non-profit organization dedicated to ending the practice of leaving kids unattended in and around motor vehicles, convened an expert panel to study this issue. After examining the data, the panel decided that leaving children alone in or around motor vehicles is a “major issue that crosses all socio-economic levels”. The committee also said that “well-meaning parents and care providers were not aware of the potentially deadly consequences of this common social practice.”

Hyperthermia (heat stroke) was the most common cause of death of children in the above study. It can happen fast because the temperature inside a vehicle increases very quickly. One study published in the journal Pediatrics showed that on a day in which the temperature is only 73 degrees, the car’s internal temperature increased to 90 degrees in 10 minutes and reached almost 100 degrees in 20 minutes. After an hour, the temperature was 117 degrees, and most of the temperature rise occurred in the first 30 minutes. “Cracking” the windows made almost no difference.

Small children, especially infants, are more sensitive to extreme heat. It has been estimated that their body temperature increases three to five times as fast as an adult’s when exposed to heat.

I spoke with Maple Valley Police chief Michelle Bennet about this issue.

“You are always taking a chance leaving a child in a car alone, motor running or not,” she said. “Also, parents should make sure car keys are secured and cars are locked at all times, because children can get into cars when parents are unaware.”

Researching this subject to write this column was both eye-opening and frightening. What scared me the most is that these tragedies happened to ordinary families. These weren’t, in most cases, abusive or even neglectful parents. They were just unaware of the potential consequences.

After all, most of us have done it. When we are driving around dropping off books at the library, stopping by the drycleaners or the ATM machine, getting the kids in and out of the car can take longer than doing the task itself. Then there is always the moment after you’ve gotten everyone into the car then realize you forgot something inside the house. It’s just so easy to do.

Janette Fennell, founder and president of “Kids and Cars,” said that parents always think that these tragedies won’t happen to them. She named a few of the parents who have lost children to hyperthermia: A lawyer, a pediatrician, a NASA scientist, a dentist and a college professor. These were all “good” parents.

She shared a few other facts:

• An average of 36 children per year die of hyperthermia; that is a child every 10 days. Drugs or alcohol were involved in less than 8 percent of these cases.

• By putting kids in the backseat, deaths due to airbag injuries have been almost eradicated, but there has been an increase of deaths from children in the backseat being “forgotten” resulting in hyperthermia.

• It’s also a mistake to think that it can’t happen when it’s not that hot outside. A car is like a greenhouse. “We have had children die when the temperature is in the 60s. Parents seem to have gotten the message that it is unsafe to leave a child unattended around water, but not that it is equally unsafe to leave children unattended in and around motor vehicles,” Fennell said.

So, back to the original question: Is it ever okay to leave a child in a car alone? Some would say that there is no absolute right or wrong answer, that it’s not black and white. But the facts speak for themselves: These deaths and injuries are preventable.

And I’d bet if we asked the parent of a child who was injured or killed in this way, they would tell us that there is a right answer: Don’t do it. It’s not worth the risk.

Tiffany Doerr Guerzon lives in Maple Valley. She can be reached at homespun@reporternewspapers.com