What’s Can Happen
The majority of deaths to children involving vehicles are traffic crashes on streets or highways, but
about 10% of deaths are reported as non-traffic related. Because most of these incidents happen in driveways, parking lots and sidewalks, there is little national data to help us understand exactly what happened or even how many of these incidents take place.
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Heat Inside Cars
(Source: Dept. of Geosciences, San Francisco State University)
- The temperature inside a car can reach deadly levels within minutes, even with the windows open a little. On days with temperatures above 86°F, the internal temperatures of the vehicle quickly reached 134°F to 154°F.
- These high temperatures can quickly cause heat exhaustion, hypothermia and even death for young children. A child’s body warms 3 to 5 times faster than an adult’s.
- An average 36 children died per year from 1998-2006 from hyperthermia after being left unattended in a vehicle.
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Backovers
(Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention based on data from 2001-2003)
After being struck by a vehicle in a driveway or parking area:
- 2,500 children ages 1-14 reported to U.S. emergency rooms per year.
- An average of 229 children died per year.
- Almost half of these injured children were ages 1-4.
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Trunks
Children can get trapped in the trunks of cars. All cars made after 2001 are equipped with a glow-in-the-dark internal trunk handle release in case of accidental entrapment but young children can become disoriented and confused when in a strange or frightening environment. |
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