Protect Your Children-In and Around Cars

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/091710dnmetchilddeath.fdc2c6c3.html

OK folks. At this rate there have been 45 deaths related to hyperthemia from being unattended in cars. This has been a particularly bad year and at this rate we are going to hit an all time high if we don't educate more. Pass on the dangers of leaving kids unattended in cars and the safety tips, like leave something you need in the back seat or setting your cell phone as a reminder.
Let's all do what we can and also look in cars in the parking lots.
THANKS!!

Ok, let's all get this rolling to make sure our kids are protected.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/mandatory-child-sensor-alert-systems-for-all-new-vehilces/218784742/taf


Thanks!!

Janette and I have been diligently working on our new parent info that is to go into Kansas packets. I am hopeful to soon have it in other locations.

There have been many successes lately, with the Pulitzer prize for Fatal Distraction and getting through round on of the Chase Community of Giving.


The link takes you directly to the Fatal Distraction article. It truly is a ‘must read.’

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2009/03/06/ST2009030602446.html?sid=ST2009030602446
Dee

http://www.news-press.com/article/20100308/NEWS0110/100308046/1075/Fort-Myers-police-investigate-infant-s-death

Why do we hold on to phones that don’t work or that we know we’ll never use again?


KidsAndCars.org has the answer!







KidsAndCars.org is working with Recycling for Charities (RFC) and we need your help to get our campaign rolling. RFC makes a donation on your behalf to KidsAndCars.org for each mobile phone, PDA, Palm Pilot, iPod or digital camera you collect. If you know many people who would like to donate their electronic devices, take recycling a step further by organizing a fundraising recycling drive.



Help KidsAndCars.org by simply placing drop boxes in your local community. It's as easy as 1-2-3!



1. Tell us how many boxes you need (one box = 30-50 phones). We will ship them to you within one week.

2. Drop off the boxes.

3. Take boxes to post office when they have been filed.

*A pre-paid shipping label and tax donation forms can be printed directly from RFC’s website. (www.recyclingforcharities.com)

Schools, businesses, churches, etc… are all great locations for these boxes.

Hope you enjoy the new look of the site

Car Abductions
As parent’s lives get busier with their children and juggling their hectic work schedules, many things are competing for their attention.
Some parents may think that leaving the child in the car for a few minutes is an acceptable thing to do, but those few minutes usually turn into 5-30 minutes or more. Those minutes can prove to be dangerous or even deadly. When it relates to your child their safety should be the first focus.

The dangers of leaving a child alone in a car can include:
Heat stroke/Death
Strangulation in a car window
Injury from being backed over or setting a car in motion
Abduction by a stranger
Trunk Entrapment

Across the nation there is a trend in child abductions after a parent mistakenly goes into the store for a quick item and leaves the child with the car running outside. The thief means only to steal a car but then finds a child sleeping in the back. Many of those cases have turned into situations where the abductor will abandon the car with the child inside. Some may leave the car running while other do not, further compromising the safety of the child from exposure to the elements.

Protect your children by following safety measures and never leave them alone in or around a car.

Just like your car you child can be gone in 60 seconds.

Know the Hot Spots Safety Tips:
Check the backseat when getting out of a car
Place an item you will need in the back or place a diaper bag in the front seat with you
Teach children not to play around cars
Keep keys out of the reach of children and the car locked at all times
Check the entire vehicle first if your child is missing
Be cautious of inside temperatures when placing a child inside a car
Teach children not to play in, on or around cars.
Never leave a child unattended in a car, even with the windows down. On a typically sunny, summer day, the temperature inside a car can reach potentially deadly levels within minutes.
Always lock car doors and trunks – even at home – and keep keys out of children’s reach.
Watch children closely around cars, particularly when loading or unloading.
Check to ensure that all children leave the car when you reach your destination.
Don’t overlook sleeping infants.
When restraining children in a car that has been parked in the heat, check to make sure seating surfaces and equipment (car seat and seat belt buckles) aren’t overly hot.
If your child gets locked inside a car, get him out and dial 911.
Teach older children how to disable driver’s door locks if they unintentionally become entrapped in a car.

For years I admired people who lived through a tragedy and wondered to myself how on earth they could turn tragedy into something so positive. John Walsh is one person that comes to my mind when he decided to turn his tragedy into an amazing change in society.
When the tragedy of losing Aslyn hit our home it was something that rocked our lives to the very core. It took some time for the reality to hit. It felt like you were living a nightmare and wanted to just wake up and things be OK. But we couldn't wake up because it was real.
The day after she died I woke up from a dream that she had hugged me around my face and kissed my forehead. On awakening it felt as though it were the most real thing. I could still feel where she kissed my forehead. I felt that was her way to say, "Mom I am OK, and I love you."
I called my aunt on the phone in the middle of the night bawling and asked her how on earth I could ever live without her. She told me, " honey, it won't be easy but you have to find a way to honor her."
So honor her was my mission.
Aslyn was a joy and the most pretty baby ever and I am so glad she was a part of my life.
When I came to my husband a few months into the loss and said, "I know you won't understand, but I have to do something about it. I can't let anyone else feel this pain. Leaving children in the car is something we see all the time and no one knows how dangerous it is" I was not expecting him to understand but he said OK. (He is more the behind the scenes kinda guy but he cheers me on.)
So off the journey went.
Sometimes it is hard to see where you have been because you are trudging onward and upward. I think we have had some incredible successes.
Well, really, each day is a success and every achievement we accomplish is a step in healing. Though the pain is always there, I find comfort in thinking that every time we tell her story and every time I take the time to educate someone, we save a life in her honor.
May sound Cheesy to some, but it is a way to get through each day for us moms and dads out there working hard to make sure no one else joins this club that no one wanted to be a part of.
Six years later, I have to say that I still miss her like you can't even imagine and wish she were here. I miss her squealing for joy just seeing me walk into the door from work and her sweet singing to the car radio from the back seat. I think she would be proud that we do everything we can to save other children.
So my close for the post...
Watch the Kids and Cars PSA and remember that kids shouldn't be left alone in a car..not even for a minute.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66YOTi8f1Os

This is a must see. Go Team Kids and Cars!

http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/941968Vote if you have not already done so for Kids and Cars in honor of Aslyn. We are low man on the totum pole right now but with your help we can climb up fast. Pass on to all of your friends and challenge them to vote too.

Danger: Your car can be a death trap
Michael Tannebaum
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
The dangers of a moving vehicle are no mystery, but less well known are the hazards of one that’s parked.Vehicles can act as potent greenhouses, trapping the sun’s heat and causing temperatures inside to soar.“Energy enters through a car’s window and heats up objects inside of the vehicle,” explained Jan Null, a meteorologist at San Francisco State University, who has done extensive research on vehicular hyperthermia. “When the sun strikes objects in the car, the objects become hot and rapidly warm the air inside the car.”Infants and children are especially susceptible to heat. A child’s body warms three to five times faster than an adult’s, so their temperature rises quicker, according to Null. This places children at greater risk of hyperthermia, a condition that occurs when the body’s systems become overwhelmed by heat and stop functioning.With each passing minute, a car’s temperature rises. Cracking a window is largely ineffective in slowing the heating process and after about an hour, a car’s temperature plateaus at roughly 45 to 50 degrees more than the outside air temperature, Null said.By the time a child’s temperature reaches 106 degrees, his or her heart is likely beating 50 to 60 times more per minute than usual, said Dr. Timothy Beatty, an emergency medicine specialist at Summerville Medical Center.At this point, their heating and cooling systems, which are regulated via perspiration, begin to shut down, and they can lose consciousness or become delirious, Beatty said.“If your heart beats that much faster, your respiratory rate needs to go up to compensate,” Beatty explained. “You can’t go on a treadmill and have your heart rate go up 50 beats and not be breathing faster. You will start sweating rapidly and because you’re losing water, you will become dehydrated.”Between 1998 and 2007, at least 414 children died from being left in a vehicle, according to Null, who believes the number is actually closer to 500. “We know we are undercounting and it may be as much as by 20 percent,” he said.Null examined media reports from hundreds of child vehicular hyperthermia deaths from 1998 through 2007 and found that in about half the cases, the child was “forgotten” by the caregiver. In the majority of the remaining cases, the unattended child was playing in the vehicle.“If a child doesn’t die from being left in a vehicle, he or she may still have serious damage to their organs,” Null said. “I’ve studied cases in which children have become totally incapacitated and will have to be fed for the rest of their lives.”Summerville Police Capt. Jon Rogers is unsure how many calls the department receives each year regarding unsupervised children in vehicles, but noted that it does happen and “it is a very real problem.”When a call is received concerning an unattended child in a car, multiple officers are dispatched to the scene.“Fortunately, we’ve never had a situation in which a child was in severe distress,” Rogers said. “If that happened, we wouldn’t hesitate to break the car’s window.”Only 15 states have laws that prohibit leaving a child unattended in a vehicle and although South Carolina isn’t one of them, Rogers advises people to never leave a child unsupervised in a car.“Just because we don’t have a law saying you can’t do it doesn’t mean you can,” Rogers said.Null, who echoes Rogers’ sentiments, says parents and caregivers often underestimate how long an errand will take.“When we go into the bank or grocery store for what we think will be five minutes, it often ends up turning into half an hour,” Null said.When people learn a child has died from being left in a vehicle, they often incorrectly assume it’s an isolated incident, according to Null.“It’s an epidemic,” he said. “But there’s no real awareness of the issue.”Contact Michael Tannebaum at 873-9424 ext. 215 or mtannebaum@journalscene.com

Untimely death: Infant died from hot car
Michael Tannebaum
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
On the morning of Feb. 5, 2004, Deona Ryan gently kissed her perfectly healthy 1-year-old daughter, Aslyn, on the head before going to work. Eight hours later, the infant girl was lying in an emergency room with a 106-degree temperature. She would lose her life two days later.Sitting in her second floor office at Summerville Medical Center, Ryan, the hospital’s Director of Women’s Health, recalls that tragic 48 hours and how, five years later, it continues to inspire and shape her work.It was a Thursday morning in Hawaii, and Ryan, who moved to Summerville about a year ago, watched as her husband, Timothy, read to Aslyn, who days before had celebrated her first birthday with a Hawaiian-style luau. Afterwards, Timothy left Aslyn with Shawna Akin – a woman in her mid-30s who baby-sat the young girl.Around 2:30 p.m. Ryan received a call from her husband telling her to hurry to the emergency room. The hospital staff was waiting for Ryan when she arrived.“All I remember was Aslyn’s blood sugar level was (extremely low) and she was having trouble breathing,” Ryan said. “We were told she had global brain damage, had suffered multiple strokes and that her brain could not support her respiratory system.”Aslyn’s temperature was a scorching 106 degrees. Doctors stabilized her and placed her in the intensive care unit, but nothing could be done to save the child.Two days later, a doctor told Deona and Timothy they were only prolonging Aslyn’s death so they made what Ryan describes as a “tremendously difficult decision” to take her off of life support.Akin had said Aslyn appeared healthy until the pair became stuck in traffic for 45 minutes. However, the doctors said that didn’t explain Aslyn’s sudden onset of symptoms.“A child’s temperature doesn’t reach 106 in that short a period of time without something occurring in between,” Ryan said. “There are no cases of children dying from riding in the back of an air conditioned car.”Skeptical of Akin’s story, Ryan sent Aslyn’s autopsy to top forensic specialists throughout the country and around the world.“They all concluded that Aslyn had been left in a car for about 50 minutes,” Ryan said. “As a mom, I was in shock.”Akin, now a nurse’s aide in Wyoming, was never criminally charged because Hawaii didn’t have a law that prohibited leaving a child unattended in a vehicle.Shortly after Aslyn’s death, Ryan, now a vice president with KidsandCars.org, and her husband started Hot Spot, an educational program designed to spread the message about the dangers of leaving a child unsupervised in a vehicle. They have collaborated on projects with organizations such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Weather Service to raise awareness. Deona and Timothy’s efforts have led to laws being passed in Hawaii and Arizona that make it illegal to leave a child unattended in a vehicle, and a similar bill currently resides in the S.C. State House.“We started the program because you get those emotions where you feel like you can crawl in a hole and lay there for a while but that wouldn’t do any good because children are dying all across the country from this very thing,” Ryan said.Deona and Timothy take solace in helping prevent other children from suffering a similar fate and by remembering the abundance of joy their daughter brought them in such a short period of time.“She was such a happy baby,” Ryan said. “She was just a pleasure, an absolute pleasure.”Tips to keep children safe in and around a parked car:Check the backseat before leaving the car.Place an item you’ll need such as a purse in the backseat where the child is sitting.Teach children not to play in and around cars.Never leave a child unattended in a vehicle even with the window slightly open.Keep keys and remote entry devices out of the reach of children. Lock the car and trunk, especially at home.Walk around your parked vehicle to check for children before getting in the car and starting the engine.Make sure children are accompanied by an adult when getting in and out of a vehicle.Teach children that trunks are only used to transport cargo.If your car has a trunk release, show your children where it is and how to use it.If a child is missing, check the trunk immediately.To read more about this, click here.Contact Michael Tannebaum at 873-9424 ext. 215 or mtannebaum@journalscene.com

http://www.counton2.com/cbd/news/local/article/protecting_your_children_in_and_around_cars/21064/

H. 3588 (Word version) -- Rep. J. E. Smith: A BILL TO AMEND THE CODE OF LAWS OF SOUTH CAROLINA, 1976, BY ADDING SECTION 56-5-3910 SO AS TO PROVIDE DEFINITIONS FOR THE TERMS "CHILD" AND "UNATTENDED", TO PROVIDE THAT IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR THE OPERATOR OR AN ADULT PASSENGER OF A MOTOR VEHICLE TO LEAVE THE MOTOR VEHICLE FOR MORE THAN FIVE MINUTES WHEN AN UNATTENDED CHILD IS INSIDE THE VEHICLE, TO PROVIDE THAT CERTAIN PERSONS WHO OBSERVE A CHILD LEFT UNATTENDED IN A MOTOR VEHICLE MAY REMOVE THE CHILD FROM THE VEHICLE AND ARE NOT LIABLE IN A CIVIL ACTION TO ANY PARTY FOR AN ACT PERFORMED IN GOOD FAITH, AND TO PROVIDE A PENALTY FOR A VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION.Referred to Committee on Judiciary

We have news to share that there have been legislative efforts to save kids that are taking effect soon and some being proposed as bills on the state level.

Marana, AZ (Thank you Diane) has their new ordinance taking effect in March on leaving children unattended in cars.

South Carolina is proposing state legislation on unattended children in cars.

Hawaii is proposing a new bill to prevent child care providers from misrepresenting themselves to parents regarding their credentials and the number of children they care for similar to the Jeremy and Julia's laws on the east coast. We thank Representative Lee for hearing our request and proposing this bill.

New law protects kids left in cars
Tyler Wing reports Posted: Nov 16, 2008 07:43 PM EST

A new Tucson City ordinance targets parents caught leaving their child in a car. The new law went into effect Saturday and imposes a fine up to $1000.
Advocates say leaving children alone inside cars for any amount of time can lead to serious health risks.
Last year the Tucson Fire Dept. says it responded to 242 calls of kids left in cars. Tucson Police say they've relied on "child endangerment" laws to punish parents but there were a lot of gray areas. Officer Linda Galindo says that gray area is now gone.
"There are state statutes that have covered this type of thing but this one is much more specific," says Galindo.
Galindo says this new law is designed to be a "wake up call" for any parent not making this a priority.
"The majority of the time we get reports. There are a lot of concerned citizens out there," she says.
Father Javier Balderas is one of those concerned citizens. "I can't even think about how they forget their kids. It's your kids!"
He says the punishment still isn't harsh enough to send a message. "I think a fine is not enough. I think they have to be jailed or something."
Mother of three, Maria Valenzuela agrees. "I think a $1000 fine is too low," she says.
Mother of four Maria Ramirez says it's a shame the city has to create a new law to remind some parents to pay more attention to their kids.
"That's horrible. It's really hot in the summer here and children could die really fast," says Ramirez.
Galindo says even the best parents should get in the habit of creating reminders. "Such as maybe put their purse in the back seat with the child or an item they're definitely not going to leave the car without."
In lieu of a $1000 fine parents can opt for 24 hours worth of parent education classes.
http://www.kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=9360005&nav=HMO6HMaY

Video
http://www.kvoa.com/global/video/flash/popupplayer.asp?ClipID1=3142379&h1=New%20law%20protects%20children%20left%20in%20cars&vt1=v&at1=News&d1=166166&LaunchPageAdTag=News&activePane=info&rnd=63529568

Video
http://www.kvoa.com/global/video/flash/popupplayer.asp?ClipID1=3141766&h1=New%20law%20for%20children%20left%20in%20car&vt1=v&at1=News&d1=128166&LaunchPageAdTag=News&activePane=info&rnd=14975670

It has been a while since my last write.
I am pleased to say that Tucson has a new Ordinance that will be in effect in November. WHEW! Maybe this is how it felt to walk on the moon. One Giant step for mankind.

At the current time frame Janette Fennell, founder of Kids and Cars, and I are trying to tackle a large retail conglomerate to work with us on our educational cause and to keep safety devices in their stores. So keep your fingers crossed that we can pull it off.

Good things on the horizon!!!

Stay tuned!!