#58 | Hot car deaths and safety | Amber Rollins, Dir. of KidsandCarSafety.org

Over 1,000 children have died in hot cars in this country since the 1990s. My guest is Amber Rollins, director of KidsandCarSafety.org, a non-profit that makes children's safety their number one priority. By advocating for new regulations to improve auto safety features, they are saving lives. With the hottest three months of the year upon us, we talk about the dangers of hot cars and how you can avoid the tragedy.


Kids and Car Safety


KidsandCars.org

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
This week on iHeart Cincy. Priorto the mid nineteen nineties, children didn't
have to ride in the backseat.Children rode up front. So why were
kids moved out of the front seat. Well, it seemed to air bags
meant for larger adults were killing smallchildren. So with the realization that children
were safer in the backseat, thatled to some unintended consequences. We see

(00:26):
the hot car deaths where children arebeing unknowingly left in cars skyrocket. Over
one thousand children in the US havedied in hot cars since the nineteen nineties.
Today, my guest is Amber Rawlins, director of Kids and Car Safety
dot Org. It's a nonprofit thatmakes children safety their number one priority.
By advocating for new regulations to improvedauto safety features, they are saving lives

(00:52):
with the hottest three months of theyear just upon us. I'll chat with
Amber about the dangers of hot carsand how you can avoid the tragedy No
on iHeart Cincy with Sandy College.Welcome to the show, Amber Rawlins,
appreciate you being here. You've beenwith Kids and Car Safety dot Org for
eighteen years? Is that right?All right? On? Eighteen years?

(01:15):
Yeah? Tell me how you gotstarted, and will you tell the story
of how the nonprofit was founded andwhy and how you came to him.
Yep, So, I eighteen yearsago was in social work school, going
to the University of Kansas, andI knew I wanted to do policy advocacy
type work and kind of was startingto go down the path into law school.

(01:40):
And then my younger years got thebest to me, and I said,
man, that's gonna be a lotof work. So I ended up
staying. I was going to getmy master's in social welfare. But then
I met Jeanette, and I actuallyjust kind of a side gig in college,
nannied for her boys and they were, you know, old enough where

(02:00):
they just really needed to taxi servicefrom one activity to the next. So
I started, you know, chitchatting it up with Jeanette and learning about
what she was doing with the organizationand all of the different issues that she
was working on, and you know, just really kind of it grabbed my
heart and I haven't been able towalk away since. So, you know,

(02:22):
we work with a lot of amazingfamilies. They've lost children and they
are the most courageous and just wonderfulpeople. I've ever known, and they
really inspired me and kind of keptthat flame going over the years. But
Jeanette started the organization back in nineteenninety five after just absolutely terrifying situation with

(02:46):
her family. So we're living inSan Francisco at the time, and they
were coming home on Halloween weekend andsomebody, not somebody, a couple of
men with ski masks on and gunssnuck under their garage door before it closed
as they pulled in, and theyput guns to her in her husband's head,
and they said get in the trunk, and of course they did everything

(03:08):
in their power not to get inthat trunk because their nine month old baby
was in the backseat. You know, they had no idea what was going
to happen to them, where theywere going to be taken, what was
going to be done to them,what we were doing with the baby,
and so it was just an absolutelyhorrified experience. They drove him up to
the middle of nowhere and another carpulls up, so like they're in the

(03:30):
middle of the field like until theyhad gone off road, and they opened
the trunk and took all of theirjewelry, wedding rings, credit cards,
and their debit cards and pin numbersand closed the trunk and left. So
here they are stuck in the trunkin the middle of nowhere. And so
Jeanette was on the outside of atrunk and she had been throughout this couple

(03:54):
hour drive digging and pulling back thatcarpeting and like trying to yank wires,
you know, put on the flashersor somehow get them pulled over. And
she saw this little flicker of lighton one of the cords and she said,
honey, I think I found thetrunk release. Those words didn't come
from her brain, they just likecame out, because at the time she

(04:16):
didn't even know what a trunk releasewas. Well, Greg pulled the cord
and the trunk popped open, andthey jumped out and ran to the backseat.
No baby, no car seat.Everything in the car was gone,
and they had They don't make themanymore, I don't think. But it
was like a one time start yourcar key kind of thing. And Jeanette

(04:38):
had just purchased this a week priorbecause she locked her keys in the trunk,
and you know, you have tokind of wonder, like was the
universe looking out for her? Theone thing they didn't take out of the
car was that. So they wereable to start the car then and drive
back towards city lights and get toa pay phone. How's the stytime or
nighttime? At this point middle ofthe night, they dispatched police to their

(05:01):
home to start looking for the baby, and Alex was found still strapped into
his car seat in their front yard. So these guys had just taken him
her seat and all and plopped himin the front yard and left him there.
And they were traumatized, right,but they survived relatively unharmed. And
one of the officers said to Jeanette, it never ends this way. Well,

(05:23):
if it doesn't end that way,how does it end? And so
she started researching, and she quicklylearned that there was no data on how
many people were dying in the trunkof cars, And she would come across
cases of children playing hide and goseek and being trapped inside and dying,
and you know, women being kidnappedand taken to remote locations and raped and

(05:44):
murdered and really just the worst ofthe worst kind of situations that you can
imagine nightmares. So she decided shewas going to call it the auto industry
and say, hey, you guysneed to put something in the trunk so
people can get out, you know, to make a very long story,
or she began collecting data because itdidn't exist anywhere else, and you can't
get anything done to prevent something ifthere's no data. So she one by

(06:09):
one documented trunk and trapment cases intoa database and she was able to prove
it was a huge problem. Shewas then able to get a safety standard
pasted such that all vehicles now twothousand and two, a newer come with
a little clone in the dark trumprelease that allows you to escape if you're
ever trapped in the trump of yourcar. That story is just so unbelievable

(06:33):
and so true, and so thathas morphed into now other advocacy for safety
and now kids in car safety,which is why we're talking because of the
hot car deaths that happen. Youhave a very big role in some of
the other safety features that have beenimplemented so that our children are safer around

(07:00):
cars. You want to go oversome of those improvements, like the cameras
and such. There's features in people'scars that they don't even know are there,
and they may have actually prevented atragedy they didn't even know could have
happened. So with the trunk releases, this little three cent per vehicle piece
of plastic literally eliminated the problem.Not one person has died in the trunkil

(07:24):
vehicle that has a trunk release.Zero. Now you have to have your
foot on the brake to put yourcar and gear. We call it bitsy
for short. It's a break transmissionshift interlock. And the reason for that
is because children and quite often petswho are left alone in vehicles would be
crawling around and they'd knock the carin to gear. And how fun for

(07:46):
a kid to sit in the driver'sseat and you know, be playing with
those shifts and gearsers and like justdo it, and they want to try.
And literally hundreds of children were beinginjured or killed that way every year.
Pretty rare for us to see thatnow, and typically only in older
vehicles that don't have that type ofsystem. We also were successful in getting

(08:09):
safer power window switches. We usedto have power window switches that were like
a teeter totter or like a togglethat moved forwards and backwards. Children and
you're going to notice the theme here. Pets mostly dogs will kneel or lean
on that armrest and roll the windowup on themselves and then they would get

(08:30):
their heads stuck. Oh yes,and vehicles power windows exert upboards of forty
to eighty pounds of force, andit only takes twenty pounds to break a
child's tree Kia and half. Theseare cases where mom and dad could have
been standing just feet away with theirback to their child, and you know

(08:50):
they can't make a sound once thatwindow is up, So now you have
to like scoop your finger to rollthe window up in your car. We
have not seen any power window strangulationsin vehicles that have that scoop to roll
up. We do still see someinjuries where like the driver rolls up the

(09:11):
back window and somebody has their fingersout the window. So we are still
pushing for auto reverse to be onall windows, which that automatic bounce back.
Most vehicles now in the front seatswill have that auto reverse feature,
and the reason for that is becausethe front seats have that one touch up

(09:35):
so you can like click the powerwindow button and then the window automatically goes
all the way up. And wereally need it in the back seat.
That's where our kids are riding,and that's who's going to get in trouble
in their fingers out the window house. So one way people can test though,
to see if their vehicle has thatfeature is grab a rolled up towel

(09:58):
and stick it in the window.Make sure your fingers aren't there. The
window will break them off, andif it bounces back, then you have
that feature. Okay, that's good. That's good to know. So your
organization has really done a lot.The reason we were talking today was because
I started noticing the hot car deathsstarted kind of increasing again this year,

(10:18):
and in doing the research that you'vedone, I was surprised to hear well
over a thousand children have died incars. And to see the information that
you have and how it's broken down, it's really really interesting. And I
would definitely encourage anybody who's listening tothis, including children, to check out

(10:41):
your website for that information, becauseit helps you understand what the danger is
and then that'll help you remember incase it ever applies to you. So
let's talk about first of all,why hot car deaths started happening in the
mid nineteen nineties. People don't reallyseem to understand why it started then,
but there was a reason. Yeah. So it's really interesting if you compare

(11:05):
hot car deaths year by year,and you know, compare that side by
side with front seat airbag deaths ofchildren, and you know, on the
surface level, you're like, what, how does that have anything to do
with each other? But it's reallytelling because prior to the mid nineteen nineties,
children didn't have to ride in theback seat. Children rode up front,

(11:28):
and this was a normal practice.But we started having children being killed
because overpowered air bags were exploding andhitting them in that front seat, and
so there was a huge national campaignmove your kids to the back seat.
They're safer back there. They arestill safer back there. That is where

(11:50):
your children should ride, no matterwhat. And we see the airbag desk
just virtually disappear. You know,no more children are being killed by front
airbox because they're riding in the backseat. And at the same time,
we see the hot car deaths wherechildren are being unknowingly left in cars skyrocket

(12:13):
and they haven't gone down since.But we completely changed the way that we
transport our children. They used tobe writing right next to us we could
see them. You can't lose awarenessof them when they're right next to you.
But now our children are writing inthe backseat. They're in rear facing
car seats. Again that's the safestthing for them, But that facing car

(12:35):
seat, it looks the same whetherthere's a baby in there or not.
And you know, these babies fallasleep in the car, so you can't
hear them, you don't see them. And for any parent who's got a
million things going on, and yes, that's every single one of us,
right, you know, and thosefirst few years, you're so sleep deprived
it's just almost unbearable. And thatreally affects the way that the memory systems

(13:01):
in your brain work. And it'sa perfect storm, right. I always
like call it the Swiss cheese model. You know, you have to have
all the right circumstances aligning in orderto have such a tragedy happen. So
a lot of times people will say, you know, I raised five kids.
Never once did I leave them inthe car like that, There's no

(13:22):
way this is happening to good parents. Well, yeah, you probably had
situations where you lost awareness of themin the backseat, but you just haven't
connected that that instance with how thiscould happen and lead to a hot car
death and take a quick break andget back with Amber Rollins from Kids and
Car Safety dot Org. To bethe one responsible for your child's death is

(13:46):
the worst thing that could ever happento anybody. This is iHeart Since this
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iHeartRadio app Now this is I HeardCincy. I'm Sandy Collins. My guest

(14:58):
today is Rollins, Director of Kidsand Car Safety dot org, a nonprofit
formed to make life safer for childrenwhen it comes to cars. Today we're
talking about hot card debts and howto avoid them. Over one thousand children
have died in the US after beingforgotten or getting in on their own and
trapped. This story hit home herein the Tri State. We had a

(15:20):
terrible incident here about six years ago. A mother working at Procter and Gamble
drove right past the daycare center babiesin the very back. She said,
the baby usually babbled and talked andwhatever. This morning it was quiet,
and she parked at her work andat five o'clock her husband called and said

(15:43):
the baby wasn't ever dropped off andwent running out and found her her baby.
And you know, it's just devastating, and so she started a foundation
trying to work through her grief.And they have a website called bag in
the Back dot org and that's wherethe movement is to try to get you
to put something in the backseat witha baby so that you you know,

(16:03):
if you're checking for your keys oryour purse or your phone, you know
you'll you'll turn around and do that. And also part of her story is
that her psychologist told her that shehad this it was called false memory syndrome,
where she experienced remembering taking the childto the daycare. But it didn't

(16:26):
really happen, and they didn't presscharges against her because it wasn't a reckless
thing, it was an accident.Let's talk about what the parents go through
after the child dies. They haveChildren's services investigations, criminal investigations, repercussions
at work. Let's talk about allof those consequences. Yeah, I know

(16:51):
Karen quite well, the mother thatyou're talking about, her little girl with
Sophia, and she's been so braveand you know, wonderful to do the
things that she's doing. And we'revery proud of her for that. Yeah,
she's been she's done great things.But so after a hot car tragedy
happens, is that grief is exponential. I mean, to be the one

(17:14):
responsible even though you had no idea, what was happening to be the one
responsible for your child's death is theworst thing that could ever happen to anybody.
You know, these families, theyhalf of them are criminally charged,
and all of them go through achild Protective Services investigation that is extremely difficult.

(17:37):
Some of these court cases go outyears after the child has died.
People lose their jobs, they losetheir careers, they lose their professional licenses,
they lose the ability to adopt children, they lose the ability to be
around children, their own children,and just the hate and ridicule that comes

(18:00):
the public towards them is inhumane really, So let's talk about the main ways
that kids end up dying in thecar. There's three basic areas. The
first is unknowingly being left in thevehicle. Yep, these cases are so
predictable and so preventable. Certain circumstancesin almost all of these cases where the

(18:22):
child is unknowingly left and that isa severely sleep to prey parrot fatigue is
through the roof. We've got achange in the normal morning routine. Some
of the common things that we seeare following a holiday weekend or starting a
new daycare routine, or families thathave multiple children with drop off at different

(18:47):
locations, switching the order of thatdrop off. We see that all the
time. Sometimes it's a situation wheremom and dad are returning home from church
or wherever, and you know,they've got several kids, They've got groceries
to unload, diaper bags, toys, all the things, and everybody,

(19:10):
you know, hops out of thecar and he gets into motion, goes
inside. Mom thinks dad got thebaby and put the baby in the crib.
Dad thinks mom got the baby,put the baby in the crib.
Everyone thinks baby's napping in the cribpeacefully. Our two hours pass. Someone
goes to check on baby. Baby'snot there, Yeah, and then it's

(19:30):
too late. And the other waythat these tragedies happen are when children get
into a vehicle on their own.And that's about twenty five percent of these
cases. Sixty eight percent of thosechildren are little boys. You know,
anybody who's got a little guy isnot surprised by this because they play with

(19:52):
their hot wheels, They watch themovie Cars like they are just geared towards
vehicles. All of their hero likepolice guys drive cars, and you know,
it's like way cool, and theywant to pretend and they'll get in,
but they don't always know how toget back out. And if you
think about, you know, it'sa cognitively challenging task to pull that door

(20:15):
handle and push the door open inthe opposite direction. The child that's one
to four or five years old,a lot of them have never had to
do it because mom and dad putthem in and take them out every time.
And so they get in there andthen they're like, oh my gosh,
they can't get I don't know howto And it happens most frequently over

(20:36):
the weekend, you know, thekids are out playing all day or whatever.
And I know a lot of folksmaybe don't lock their cars if they're
out in the rural areas because theydon't worry about it being stolen, but
they're not thinking about children possibly gettinginto the vehicle. Even if it's not
your own child, another child,neighborhood kids can do that too, and
that would just be the most awfulthing to happen. And then the other

(21:03):
unknown circumstances where people just you know, it just happens. They don't understand
how the child got in there.Maybe but that's a smaller percentage of hot
car deaths over a thousand children.Though, Let's talk about some more of
the statistics when it comes to likethe color of the vehicle makes a big
difference. Yeah, so a lotof one of the number one questions that

(21:25):
people ask is well, how longis too long? And how hot does
it have to be? And there'sreally no like perfect recipe here, right,
because there's so many different factors thatmake a difference. The interior and
the exterior color of the vehicle makea difference. Whether that vehicle has tinted
windows, or whether it's parked onwhite cement versus black asphalt. Is it

(21:48):
in the shade or is it parkedin full sun? Is it really humid
outside? Is it not? Howhydrated was the child when they were left?
What was the child wearing where theystrapped into their car seats? Still,
you have the look Before you Locknational program, which has all kinds
of information that you give out todifferent organizations. Let's talk about that and

(22:14):
how people can get the who yougive it to, and then how people
can get this information. Yeah,so we send out our look before you
Lock safety information cards to hospital birthingcenters, through early childhood education programs,
childcare centers, hospitals, physicians offices. We want every parent with a child

(22:36):
underage five to have this information intheir toolbox. It gives some great safety
tips. It talks about the brainand the memory systems and how they can
fail you even if you are themost cautious, loving, responsible parent.
It happens to the best of thebest, and the tips on the back
are really awesome. I would encouragepeople to go to our website and look

(22:56):
at them. One of those tipsis sort of like what Karen's talk about.
Put something you need to start yourday in the back seat so you
have to open that back door inorder to go into work and get started.
That could be like your key cardthat allows you to get into your
building at work. You know,whatever that item is that you can't move

(23:18):
forward without. You can also placesome kind of reminder item in the front
seat with you every time you bufflethe baby in as a visual queue that
your child is with you. Whenmy son was little, I used to
listen to baby music when he wasin the car because it just kind of
kept me in that conscious mindset thathe was there. And then in order
to prevent kids from getting in andbecoming trapped. There's some really simple tips.

(23:44):
Keep your cars locked, keep thekey fobs and keys out of reach
of children one hundred percent of thetime, and then talk to your kids
about how it's never safe to getinto a car without a grown up ever.
Ever, Ever, it is verydangerous, and if your child does
go scene, you want to checkthe inside, floorboard and trunk of all
vehicles in the area immediately. Ican't tell you how many times these children

(24:08):
could possibly still be alive if peoplehad just thought to look in the car
right. And some of these childrendo survive, they're in there for a
long time. Then they have longterm health problems. Yeah, children can
suffer severe brain damage. I mean, we know families where the children now
require twenty four or seven care aroundthe clock. They are severely disabled.

(24:33):
June, July, and August arethe worst months. And according to your
statistics, it's happened in every statein our nation, but more so down
in the South. But it hashappened here in Ohio. We were I
was looking at your numbers. Ohiohas had twenty two hot car deaths since
you started taking these statistics. Kentuckyhas had twenty eight and they have a

(24:57):
much few lower population than Ohio,and then Indiana's had sixteen. So in
you know, in this Tri statearea, tragically, a lot of these
have happened. And it doesn't haveto be one hundred and ten degrees outside
in order to do this. Alot of these children die when the temperatures
are in the in the eighties.Oh yeah, We've documented cases where it

(25:19):
was in the sixties outside and youknow that's all a function of that vehicle
being the greenhouse, right. Yeah. I'm Sandy Collins speaking with Amber Rawlins,
the director of Kids and Car Safetydot org, working hard to prevent
hot car deaths here in the TriState and across the country. And let's
debunk the myth that cracking the windowswill keep it cool in there. It

(25:44):
will not. It will not.And it took me a great long while,
if I'm honest, to really understandthis, because I'm thinking like that
just doesn't make sense. And Ithink a lot of people. I see
people crack their windows all the time, especially when they leave their dog in
the car, which is not safeat all either. But the way it
was explained to me that really kindof hit home and made it all come

(26:07):
together. Is you've got the heatcan come in through the windows, but
then that heat is sort of likebouncing around inside the vehicle, and the
chances of it bouncing into that crackwhere it can escape are not good.
So the heat can come in throughthe windows, but it can't go back

(26:27):
out through the windows. It's trappedinside. That's what a greenhouse is.
That's how a greenhouse works. Andyou know, the greenhouse keeps it warm,
the plants can grow. A vehicleis a greenhouse. That's it.
It's an oven. Well. Ihope that this message gets heard and ingested

(26:48):
by every listener that tears this.We also are on the iHeartRadio app so
people can send this podcast to youngfamilies or anyone that has children or lives
out in the sticks that as carsthat don't have the safety features that have
been added to these cars, andthose little cars are possible death traps.

(27:11):
So it's important to get them lockedup and and and not let the kids
get into them. But Ambert,thank you so much for what you do.
I'm so sorry that you know yourorganization had to come from tragedy,
but you are certainly educating and savinglives. So thank you, Thank you
so much, Sandy, and weappreciate you helping us get the word out

(27:32):
there. I always like to remindpeople we are a nonprofit organization, so
we operate almost primarily all on individualdonations and anybody feels very strongly about protecting
our littlest people. We would certainlyappreciate you guys joining our newsletter or you
know, even making a little giftto help us continue what we're doing.
And we would love to see somebig donations from big corporations that are listening,

(27:56):
because we have quite a bit ofthem here in the Cincinnati area.
So yes, we are always lookingfor support. Thanks again. Amber Rollin's
director of Kids and Car Safety dotorg. You can check them out online
and get a ton of information onhow to avoid these terrible hot car deaths
and other child related safety issues aroundcars. We'll see you back here next

(28:21):
week here on iHeart Cincy, TakeCare. I Heeart Cincy is a production
of iHeartMedia Centinnati