Post by Graveyardbride on Oct 19, 2014 9:15:57 GMT -5
More and more children dying in hot cars
In a vast parking lot frequented by more than 6,000 employees, the tiny girl inside a Nissan Leaf was left behind as her father headed in to work. Within hours, she was dead. Later, the father told police he'd forgotten she was in the car.
Though the tragedy that played out in Hillsboro, Oregon, this week is incomprehensible to many, research shows it's a scenario that has played out hundreds of times nationwide since the late 1990s as parents and care givers grapple with a growing litany of distractions. "We are all multitasking," said Jan Null, a meteorologist at San Jose State University and national expert in heatstroke deaths involving children and automobiles. "We get out of the car, and we are thinking about six other things."
On Thursday afternoon, October 16, a 38-year-old Portland man found his 6-month-old daughter unconscious and not breathing in his electric sedan parked at Intel's Jones Farm campus. The baby, who reportedly had been in the hot car for about six hours, was pronounced dead a short time later at Tuality Community Hospital. Autopsy results are pending, but hyperthermia is usually the cause of death in such cases. Hillsboro police, who have not identified the family or disclosed whether any charges are pending, said the father told officers he wasn't operating on his usual schedule. He had taken his daughter to the doctor, then was supposed to drop her off at daycare. Instead, he went straight to work, forgetting she was in her car seat.
A change in routine is among the most common reasons parents cite for forgetting a child in the car, Null said. Others say they were preoccupied or distracted by a phone call or other interruption. In the United States, at least 635 children have died of hyperthermia in vehicles since 1998. In 51 percent of those cases, the parent or care giver said they had forgotten the child was inside, according to Null's data.
Sometimes the mind just doesn't register what it should be doing. For example, a person lost in thought could easily miss the exit they take every day on the drive home, Null said. Those chances are only magnified by a change in routine.
Fathers are slightly more likely than mothers to forget a child in the car, data show. That doesn't mean dads are more forgetful. Rather, it's probably because their child's appointments and drop-offs are less likely to be part of their daily schedules, said Lauren Sardi, assistant professor of sociology at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut. "The father doesn't normally drop the child off at daycare, then one day he does and forgets," Sardi said.
Texas tragedy. Though Brett Cavaliero frequently took his daughter Sophia Ray, known as "Ray Ray," to daycare, the morning of May 25, 2011, was a little out of the ordinary. He and his wife, Kristie Reeves-Cavaliero, had overslept. The hustle to get out the door of their Austin, Texas, home was "chaotic," she recalled. Reeves-Cavaliero had dressed Ray Ray in a bright tropical dress her teacher had given her for her first birthday, 10 days earlier. Green, yellow, hot pink and fuschia flowers popped against the brown background. Ray Ray's blue eyes sparkled.
The couple made plans to meet for lunch, then loaded Ray Ray into the four-door Chevy Silverado crew cab. Cavaliero drove away, planning to drop Ray Ray off at daycare. But instead of turning left, toward the daycare, he turned right, toward his office. "For reasons we don't understand, our tragedy originated with one wrong turn," Reeves-Cavaliero said.
US incidents. More than three dozen children, on average, die of heatstroke in vehicles in the U.S each year, data show. There have been 29 such deaths since Jan. 1, compared with 44 for all of 2013, and 635 reported since 1998, according to San Jose State University researcher Jan Null, the leading authority on the topic. He cautions, however, that these numbers might be off by as much as 10 percent because some fatalities occur in isolated areas or are never reported.
Cavaliero worked until his wife picked him up for lunch in her car. On the short drive to the restaurant, they talked about how pretty Ray Ray looked in her dress that morning. Then Cavaliero became quiet. As they pulled into the restaurant parking lot, he told his wife to turn back. When she asked why, he told her what he couldn't remember doing that morning. Frantic, she called the daycare, then 911, while he called the office manager. Reeves-Cavaliero recalled her husband curling in a fetal position as they sped back, repeating three words: "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God."
When the couple arrived at the office, they found their daughter, purple-lipped and expressionless as office staff tried to revive her. But Ray Ray was pronounced dead at an emergency room about an hour later.
Reeves-Cavaliero was never angry at her husband for leaving their daughter in the truck, because anyone could have made that mistake, she said. The couple has worked with a host of therapists to help them cope and heal, which each needed to do at a different pace. "We were the only two people to really understand the depth of our losses," she said.
Shortly after Ray Ray's death, the couple started a nonprofit focused on parent-daycare provider communication. Thousands of people in dozens of states and a handful of countries have since taken "Ray Ray's pledge."
Emotional scars. Not all stories of children stranded in cars end tragically, but the ordeal can leave survivors scarred. Ben Hoffman, a professor at Oregon Health & Science University and medical director of Doernbecher's Tom Sargent Children's Safety Center, has encountered many children in several states who have felt the physical and mental effects of time spent trapped in a vehicle. These cases can have lingering effects on parents, too. Hoffman has encountered many in various stages of disbelief, and anger at themselves. "It's generally well-intended parents who love their kids, but get super distracted and make a horrible, critical mistake," Hoffman said. "It's a common enough problem that it needs to be in people's consciousness."
This applies to Oregon's temperate climate just as much as it might a Sunbelt state. Many car deaths occur during temperatures in the 60s.
On Thursday, when temperatures hovered around 70 degrees in Hillsboro, a car interior's temperature could have risen as much as 40 degrees the first hour parked outside, Null said. It would have continued to rise and plateau after several hours, reaching as high as 110 to 115 degrees, he said. It's a point Hoffman wants to drive home: Under no circumstances is it ever okay to leave a child alone in a car for any amount of time.
Implausible, some may say. Unforgivable, some OregonLive commenters have decided. However, Hoffman doesn't think it's right to criticize parents who, for whatever reason, forget their children in the backseat. Their grief doesn't need to be magnified, he said. "When we talk about injury prevention, we don't talk about accidents," Hoffman said. "Berating somebody for suffering a tragedy is just not fair. We all make mistakes."
Source: Hannah Leone, OregonLive, October 18, 2014.