A Hot Weekend Reminder for Parents

By 98.1 Free FM | July 8, 2011 at 5:54 am | | Tags: cars, Children, health, heat, John McKiggen

It’s going to be a sunny, hot weekend and a reminder from a child advocate to keep your kids cool. It can take as little as 5 minutes for the interior of a parked car with its windows up to reach 100 degrees Celcius on a hot summer day.

John McKiggin, Canadian chair of www.kidsandcars.org says if a child is in that car, the outcome can be fatal.    McKiggin tells Free-FM News, in the majority of cases, it was just a case of a parent forgetting their child was in the car.  He says it’s not a failure of love, it’s a failure of memory.   On average, 38 children die in the US each year from heat stroke after being left in a vehicle in hot weather.  Canadian figures aren’t kept.   McKiggin says he wishes they were, so it would be easier to educate people about the danger of leaving kids in the car in the summer.