What to know about children, hot car safety for Kentucky’s summer

LEXINGTON, Ky. (FOX 56) — According to the National Safety Council (NSC), the temperature of a car can increase nearly 20 degrees in 10 minutes.

The NSC said there are three primary reasons a child gets left behind in a car: either it was on purpose, the child was forgotten, or the child gained access on their own.

Claudia Summers, program manager at the NSC, encourages people to “try to make sure you lock your vehicles always, because there are children playing in the neighborhood always, and they can get in your vehicle, and then it’s a lot easier for them to use their body weight to get in a vehicle than it is for them to get out of a vehicle.”

It commonly starts by thinking a quick run into the store won’t do any harm.

“One minute can end up being 15. We don’t know, you know, how your car will heat up. We know that typically vehicles will heat up quickly within ten minutes, but that ten minutes is not a failsafe number; it’s not like nine is safe or eight is safe,” Summers said.

She said while everyone was at home in the early 2020s, the number of deaths by vehicular heatstroke decreased, but last year topped the annual average with 39 deaths.

So far this year, there have been six.

“If you aren’t the normal person to drop off your child, it is extremely possible that you will forget that they’re in the backseat,” Summers said.

Try leaving items in sight as a reminder.

“Put something in the front seat with you that reminds you of the child, whether it’s the diaper bag or their shoes or their toy or something like that,” Summers said.

A phone or purse in the backseat can also do the job; that extra step could be the difference between life and death.