There has been a great deal of media coverage of kids dying by being left in hot-cars since 2000 or so, but I can’t recall or find any coverage of such deaths before, say, 1990 or so, and not in the older eras like 1950s - even though there surely must have been such deaths too. Was it a thing back then as well?
Here they are back to 1990. There are so few then that they must have been a real rarity before that.
Seems highly unlikely that there were fewer children left in cars between the 50’s and the 90’s than since then; IIRC it used to be seen as a fairly reasonable thing to do, depending on location. But I wonder whether the difference is that people may also have been more likely to leave all of the windows wide open; which IIRC was also a lot more common.
Traditionally in that era you kept those very young kids beside you in the front seat (for example if they started crying you could reach over and comfort them). So you naturally noticed them getting in and out of cars. Later came the big push that they were safer in the back seat. Although generally safer there, you could forget they were there if you were absent-minded and they were sleeping.
Growing up I remember we’d be left in the car with the windows open all the time while our parents shopped or did errands. It got hot but at least there was air moving. Most cars didn’t have air conditioning in the 60s-70s and so in the summer you had windows open all the time. Plus they were the hand cranks instead of just being able to pop them up electronically.
Plus the world wasn’t as connected then. I’m sure it happened, and that a child who died in a hot car would probably make the local news, but if it happend in Florida you wouldn’t hear about it in New York.
An interesting period take on this.
There was an episode of Emergency! (Audit, 1973) where the paramedics get called to a strip mall parking lot, where bystanders reported a baby locked in a car. They spend what I would consider in my modern persepctive far too long figuring how to get in rather than just busting the window.
All around the car are concerned women fussing over the whole thing (because in the 70s, men all had jobs, so only women were out in store parking lots. It was a different time, you understand). Finally the mother come by and gives the paramedics grief. She was ONLY getting her hair done! My word! Insteasd of them giving her a lecture (or having her arrested and CPS taking the baby) they were chagrined and chastised. Then all the busybody women mumbled about the baby being safe and moved on.
It was supposed to be funny. Ha ha, you silly paramedics, alweays making a big deal out of nothing. I wanted her arrested! It was almost like all the “funny drunk drivers” on Adam-12. No, they aren’t funny, Not even when they drive drunk nude.
I can’t tell if you are using “comfort” as a euphemism.
I see - so even back then, it was widely recognized that kids in hot cars were a danger, but the danger just wasn’t communicated with the same dire urgency it is today?
It’s not clear, from what @Just_Asking_Questions describes about that episode, if it was about the baby being locked in a hot car, and thus in medical danger, or simply the fact that a baby had been left by itself in a locked car.
Watching the episode, we couldn’t tell how hot it was. (FWIW, the epsiode was broadcast in April, so it was probably filmed up to a month before. Not the heat of the summer, even LA heat.)
But my point was, they considered it a humerous situation, not a life threatening one, The mother wasn’t even lectured; instead, she was portrayed as the wronged party. The busybody women sided with her. There was no lesson about not leaving your kid in a car. (It can still get hot inside a car, even in February. Was the kid in direct sun? I couldn’t tell.)
No one cried “hot car danger!”, but the kid was non-responsive from the outside. (He was sleeping, but you couldn’t tell,) He could have been in trouble. You still shouldn’t leave your kid unattended. But you wouldn’t get that impression from the episode.
Then another big push for rear facing seats for younger babies.
This is probably the biggest piece. Changing from manual windows and locks to electric ones takes away a huge safety element when we’re talking about hot cars.
Probably less worry of kids being abducted if you left all car windows open too, in that era?
Both the facts that in the old days car windows were left down and kids were seated in the front where they would be less likely to be forgotten seem plausible as the major contributors to a difference in hot car deaths. But I wonder if a small factor might be increased use of day care facilities as more children are in families where there is no stay-at-home parent.
It may be my imagination, but it seems to me that the classic tragic story these days involves a mix-up/forgetfulness regarding dropping kids off at daycare. For example, mom and dad alternate responsibility - and one day, it’s dad’s turn to take the kiddy, but he gets an important call as he’s driving and forgets he’s got junior in the back seat and drives straight to work, bypassing day care.
I think it’s been a thing for a long time. Certainly I can remember warnings in the 1970’s. And definately 1990 Phoenix when I was in grad school.
Probably because not that many interwebs searches go back that far or that the newspapers were not digitized.