The national advocacy group Kids and Car Safety on Friday renewed its pressure on the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to include occupant detection in its car manufacturing guidelines with the goal of preventing children from dying from heat exposure in parked cars.
The reminder of the guidance was prompted by the death of an infant in a car in Upper St. Clair on Thursday.
In November 2021, Congress passed the Hot Cars Act as part of the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs bill. The act directs the NHTSA to develop a “child safety alert” standard for car manufacturers. The $50 technology advocated by Kids and Car Safety goes beyond the automatic $20 end-of-trip reminder system many cars on the market already come equipped with that alerts drivers the backseat may still be occupied.
NHTSA estimates that 910 children have died from heatstroke in parked cars since 1998, a tragic pattern that, in recent years, has shown no signs of abating. Last year, 23 children died in hot parked cars.
Since the bill passed, Kids and Car Safety, whose data was cited in the text of the act, has said its provisions could be improved.
In a news release Friday morning, the organization renewed its pressure on NHTSA to include occupant detection — $50 radar technology that can detect the “micro-movements” of living things — in the guidelines the regulatory body is set to prepare this year.
Allegheny County police reported the death of a 3-month-old infant, identified as Kayden Nguyen of Peters Township, in a parked car on a residential street in Upper St. Clair Thursday evening.
Police arriving on the scene determined that Kayden had been left in the parked car for hours, as temperatures reached into the low 90s Thursday afternoon. A cause of death was not released.
Venerando Costa, a lieutenant on the Allegheny County Homicide Unit, said investigators determined the infant was left unattended inside the father’s Toyota Sienna minivan.
Lt. Costa added that any charges would be determined once the medical examiner’s office rules on a cause of death.
Upper St. Clair police and EMS were notified about the boy around 5 p.m. and responded to the 300 block of Fort Couch Road.
Officials said first responders tried live-saving measures when they arrived, but the boy was pronounced dead at the scene.
Police determined the child was in the vehicle for several hours.
Lt. Costa said that detectives are confirming the timeline of events through security footage from the area.
In addition, investigators are reviewing downloaded data from the vehicle’s onboard computer.
Before Thursday, four children had died in hot parked cars this year across the country, according to data collected by Kids and Car Safety.
Amber Rollins has been working at Kids and Car Safety for the last 16 years, where she currently serves as director. She said that although parents have become more aware of the danger associated with leaving children alone in a parked car for any stretch of time, with awful stories making headlines each year, accidents continue to happen.
“This isn’t a failure of care or attention,” Ms. Rollins said. “This is a failure of memory systems in our brain.”
Exhaustion in the early months of parenting or sudden absent-mindedness due to stress at work, for example, might lead a parent with a sleeping child in the backseat to make a catastrophic mistake, Ms. Rollins said. Cars get hot quickly — 20 degrees Fahrenheit higher in as few as 10 minutes, a widely cited 2005 Stanford study found — and they trap heat well.
That, coupled with the fast rate at which children’s bodies overheat — three to five times quicker than adults, said Trina Peduzzi, a Pittsburgh-based pediatrician who serves on the board of the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics — can turn parked cars into ovens.
“This is an unfortunate, tragic reminder of how important it is to have a memory aid for parents to remember that they have an infant in the backseat,” Dr. Peduzzi said. “This can happen to any parent.”
Kids and Car Safety, since it was founded in 1995, has been focused on educating the public on the importance of creating memory aids. In addition to research and legislative advocacy, the organization has sent over a million packets of information to hospitals across the country for new parents to take home after discharge. The packets, also available online, outline simple habits parents can fold into their daily routines. They include things like always leaving a diaper bag in the front passenger seat when kids are onboard, opening the backdoor after parking, and asking childcare providers to immediately call if kids aren’t dropped off as scheduled.
But life sometimes derails habits. In those cases, devices specifically geared toward preventing hot car deaths provide a failsafe, Ms. Rollins said, and they’re already on the market. The Next Gen Automotive Sensor made by Vayyar, an Israeli radar company, scans the backseat for any and all movements, and the Senseair device made by the Japanese company AsahiKASEI combs the air for vibrations, to name a few.
“What’s really going to change things is the technology,” Ms. Rollins said. “The system has to be able to detect the presence of a living, breathing occupant in the car.”
Whether NHTSA incorporates devices like these into their mandates for car manufacturers, scheduled to arrive sometime this year, remains to be seen.
First Published: June 18, 2022, 10:00 a.m.
