Miles Harrison didn’t always drop his 21-month-old son Chase off at daycare in the mornings. On July 8, 2008, he was supposed to. Thinking he did, he proceeded with his normal routine and headed for his Herndon, Virginia, office on July 8, 2008. As he fielded work calls from the car that morning, Harrison had forgotten to drop Chase off at daycare. He left him in the car for nine hours. Chase died.
From 2010 to 2018, an average of 38 children have died of heatstroke in cars annually. Family advocacy groups desperate to save children are lobbying Congress for legislation mandating that preventive technology be put in as many cars as possible, and some car manufacturers are making technological breakthroughs to detect the presence of a child in the backseat.
Democratic presidential hopeful and Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan introduced the Hot Cars Act in the House on June 28, which would launch a study of safety technologies and mandate that all cars come equipped with a “child safety alert system.”
Janette Fennell, president and founder of kidsandcars.org, stands by the bill even though it lacks concrete technological requirements.
“All of this technology is out there, and when we write legislation, we go out of our way not to be prescriptive,” Fennell said. “We say, there needs to be something to detect the presence of a child. We don’t care how you do it, as long as it’s effective.”
Hyundai has made progress in developing child detection technology, hoping to put it in almost all models by 2022. Two models, the Santa Fe and the Palisade, now come equipped with the Rear Occupant Alert system, which detects whether a rear door was opened before the car was started. When the driver leaves the car, he or she is prompted by a front dashboard alert to check the backseat. The Ultrasonic Rear Occupant alert senses movements of a person or an animal in the backseat. If the sensor detects movement after the driver leaves the car, Hyundai sends an alert to the driver’s phone. This is an optional feature with an additional cost.
Trevor Lai, product planning manager at Hyundai, told the Washington Examiner that he is optimistic that Hyundai will reach its goal to put rear occupant alert technology in most models by 2022.
“We worked side by side with [the engineering team] to find a technical solution, foraying into something completely new,” Lai said of the sensor technology. “This was the first thing that we came up with that worked well, but as engineering groups continue with the [research and development], they may come out with something even better.”
While Hyundai and other car brands work at their own pace to make sensor technology a customary feature, Fennell and Harrison, the father of Chase, want Congress to pass concrete legislation mandating car companies to work with engineers to make these technological changes without delay.
Harrison has met with Ryan, as well as Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, a cosponsor of the Hot Cars Act. The passage of the Hot Cars Act, Harrison said, would be a form of “tangible healing” for his family and those grieving similar losses.
The act calls for a mandatory child safety systems rule to be issued for all car manufacturers no more than two years after passage. It has six bipartisan cosponsors, but given that the 2017 version of the bill stalled in the House, some children’s safety advocates are hesitant to put all their eggs in Congress’ basket.
“We are in support of the Hot Cars Act, and we feel like it’s a first step,” said Torine Creppy, president of Safe Kids Worldwide. “But we know with technology and with these recommendations, it’s going to take years. And in the time that it’ll take, we’re still losing kids.”
While waiting on Congress, Creppy said Safe Kids Worldwide will focus on hosting events nationwide to educate parents on everything childcare, from installing a car seat correctly to promoting safe pool activities. The government, Creppy said, has not given enough attention to the issue.
“When you try to get the CDC and other agencies to look at this, the numbers [of deaths] are not as high as, maybe, infectious disease,” Creppy said. “The largest number we had was last year at 53. We’re already at 33 this year, and I would hope that it wouldn’t take a very horrific death to happen to get more attention.”
The reality, Creppy and Fennell point out, is that no parents believe they would ever leave their child alone in a locked car on a hot day. But tragedies like the one that struck Harrison’s family happen each year and cross socioeconomic lines.
The inside of a car can heat to dangerously high temperatures in minutes, and children under 14 are most susceptible to heatstroke, or hyperthermia. On an 85-degree day, the car can reach an internal temperature of about 119 degrees after 30 minutes. A child’s body can heat up about five times faster than an adult’s, and at about 104 degrees, organs begin to shut down.
Nine hours after Harrison entered his office that July morning, a co-worker said teasingly to Harrison that he had a doll in his car. Harrison’s confusion quickly turned to panic, and he ran out of the building to the parking lot. Through the tinted windows of his SUV, Harrison could make out the shape of his son, and he yanked the door open to find Chase still in his car seat.
Harrison works closely with kidsandcars.org now to support other families who have recently undergone the same tragedy. Harrison said he still hasn’t forgiven himself, but he credits his wife’s bravery for slowly working to put the pieces of their lives back together through helping others.
His goal, he says, is to help grieving families heal and to show them that they are not alone in dealing with such a tragedy.
“I just don’t want other people to go through what I’ve put my family through,” Harrison said. “I’m not doing it for anything else.”
