David Pougher: Sensors, with good sense, can keep kids in cars safe

How a child can be left to suffer in a hot car seems beyond comprehension but it happens. It’s time we got serious about finding a solution, writes David Pougher.

It’s a video so clever — and disturbing — it takes your breath away: chef Matt Moran at Bondi Beach in front of invited members of the media who are expecting him to unveil his new “unconventional oven”.

He dabs some pine nut dressing and harissa on a plate and then goes to get the loin of lamb from his “oven”.

Except the oven is actually a car parked in the sun and this isn’t a cooking demonstration — it’s park of the Kidsafe campaign to alert parents to the dangers of leaving their children in parked cars.

For the record, Moran’s loin of lamb cooked in the car for 90 minutes at temperatures around 70C and, as he points out, it’s overcooked. It’s not hard to imagine what an hour and half in that temperature would do to a toddler.

Many of us would watch the video or read the reports of children left in cars — like the most recent in Melbourne this week — and conclude the parents responsible must be stupid, mad or horrifyingly negligent, that this is something that could only happen to other, less smart people.

But figures suggest this tragedy is far more common, and with more complex origins, than we might think.

More than 5000 Australian children are rescued from cars each year.

Kidsafe reports that between September 1, 2017, and August 31, 2018, there were almost 1600 calls to Ambulance Victoria to rescue people trapped in cars.

The vast majority were children and while wilful negligence might play a part, it can’t account for all of those examples.

Practical solutions are needed to stop kids from being left behind in cars.

And the issue isn’t limited to Australia. Israel has had numerous cases and, almost unbelievably, more than 800 children died of heatstroke in parked cars in the United States between 1998 and 2018.

Almost half of those cases involved a parent or guardian forgetting the child was in the car. The average number of annual deaths in the US is 38, although in 2018 it was reported that 59 children had died.

But let’s go beyond the bare statistics to the children involved: Miles Harrison left his 18-month-old son Chase in his car when he went to work, thinking he had dropped the boy at daycare.

It was only when a workmate asked Harrison if he had a doll in his truck that the horrible realisation hit.

Harrison says he’s haunted by guilt and will be for the rest of his life. Every day before dawn, he sits at his desk with a jar of dirt from Chase’s grave and tells his son how sorry he is.

Reggie McKinnon’s daughter Payton died when he left her in the car after returning to work following a doctor’s appointment.

He, too, thought he’d dropped his daughter at childcare.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking case was the death of two-year-old Zariah Hasheme in New Mexico, who died after being left in a car by her babysitter.

Zariah’s parents, Zachary and Demi, had endured six miscarriages before having their “miracle baby”.

Zacharys says he wouldn’t wish his grief on his worst enemy.

A 2007 Kidsafe campaign urging parents to not leave children in hot cars.

In Brisbane last November, Darcey and Chloe-Ann, aged one and two, were found dead in a parked car on a day the temperature reached 31 degrees.

Their mother, Kerri-Ann Conley has been charged with murder.

Statistics are shocking, the stories of unimaginable suffering for the children and their families infinitely more so.

But still the cases mount up.

Suggested solutions, including new laws, are many and varied.

Some people have blamed backward facing car seats for putting children out of sight and, potentially, out of mind.

Others have taken a more practical approach: take off a shoe or your work security card and put it by the child seat.

More scientific measures involve persuading car manufacturers to install sensors in the back seat that would sound an alarm when the engine is turned off.

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Most cars have alarms that tell you if you’ve left your headlights when you leave the car — it can’t be difficult to install sensors that might save a child’s life. Any manufacturer who objects to the cost and expense risks being labelled insensitive at best.

Because despite the campaigns, the news reports, the corrosive pain of grieving families, this problem doesn’t seem to be going away.

David Pougher is the Herald Sun opinion editor.