CARS.COM - A Texas toddler died after he was trapped in a hot car by a feature intended to keep children safer. Three-year-old Evan Trapolino apparently walked out of his house on Thursday afternoon, climbed into a car parked in the front yard and then couldn't get out because the child-safety locks on the doors were engaged, according to a report by Houston TV station KHOU.
Related: Do Child-Safety Locks Disengage in an Accident?
His death is a tragic reminder of the dangers of in-car heatstroke and of the need to keep unattended vehicles locked to protect active, curious kids. Children are more vulnerable to heatstroke than adults - their temperature can heat up three to five times faster than an adult, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Parents Central safety website.
There have already been 13 in-car heatstroke deaths this year and from 1998 through 2015, 661 children died from heatstroke. The most common incidents during that period were children left in the car by a caregiver (54 percent) or parent (17 percent), NHTSA reports. About 29 percent have been incidents like the one in Texas - a child playing in an unattended vehicle.
Among safety tips from NHTSA: Never leave a child alone in a parked car (even with windows down or air conditioning on), always look in the rear before walking away, and always lock your vehicles doors and trunk and keep the keys or fob out of a child's reach.
The Texas boy, who may have been going after a toy in the car, was found pale and not moving, and could not be revived. Firefighters told KHOU he died from cardiac arrest. Houston was under a heat advisory with temperatures hitting 96 degrees but NHTSA warns that a car can be dangerous even when temperatures are in the 60s.
No comments:
Post a Comment