I don’t think there is time to get it on with the security guy. 
I don’t carry a cell phone so I’d head into the store or attract another person’s attention in the parking lot to get someone to call 911.
911 first because it covers me both legally and insures the people that are experts are on their way and I’ll have a person on the phone who knows the appropriate response.
If I’m on 911 and the dispatcher immediately says “get something to break the window open with” and right as I bust the window open someone comes by and thinks I’m trying to kidnap a baby, I have the 911 call ongoing so it is clear as to what is going down.
Not being a medical or emergency services professional I have no clue what is the best first action, and for that reason alone I think it in the best interests of the baby to have me on the phone with someone who does know the best first action to take.
First, 911.
Then bang on the window (as the phone is ringing to 911).
If the infant wakes and cries, especially if it has tears, then I’ll wait for the dispatcher to tell me what to do next. (A baby with tears isn’t in *immediate *danger of dehydration.)
If it doesn’t rouse and cry, I’m *telling *the dispatcher that I’m breaking the window. Unless he has a real good reason for me not to, I’m doing it. If it wakes but doesn’t cry, I’m going to call that at *best *a 12 on the infant GCS - I can’t assess motor response through the glass - and I’m going to break the window anyhow.
Begin CPR, if needed.
Yes, I may be a busybody. But I’m also a mandated reporter, and that’s neglect in my state.
I think I would call 911 while trying to break the car window at the same time. Then I’d grab a bat and beat the stupid, selfish retarded parent over the head with it.
A baby ALONE in a car with the windows rolled up is NEVER just fine:rolleyes:Wow.
It only takes as little as ten minutes to kill a baby in a car during hot weather, Tripolar. That’s more than enough reason for haste.
BZZZZT! I’m sorry, these types of test questions always assume you have only one hand and no feet. You may not do things simultaneously, ever.
At least, that’s all I can figure out after nursing school. Freakin’ hate these kinds of questions - as if I can’t put on an oxygen mask* at the same time *as I ask a pregnant woman to roll to her left side. :rolleyes:
I answered “run to the store for help” because I don’t have a cell phone. If I did that’s what I’d do, call 911.
I’m pretty sure I would need to get close, first, to make sure what I thought I was seeing was what I was really seeing. Are all the windows up? Have to walk around vehicle to be sure. Is the engine running? Entirely possible, and hard to tell with modern quiet engines unless right next to it. Rap on the window - is kid just asleep, do I get a response?
If engine’s running, I’ll assume the a/c is on and I’m getting a response from the kid. Otherwise, call 911 before trying to find parent or going into the store.
Break the window, or try to. I don’t usually carry a phone, but if I had one I’d be calling 911 while breaking the window. The two minutes it would take to find and notify someone in the store could be too long, and kids can die in closed cars really fast.
Except for having read it about here, I’ve never heard that babies in a closed car are in imminent danger of death. This is like the third or fourth thread where a lot of people have had a really strong reaction to this situation (other threads have been about animals in closed cars). I wouldn’t go breaking windows based on something I read on a message board, but I might call 911 (000) to see what they had to say about it.
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I just did a little Googling. The Dept of Community Services (Child Protection) has a fact sheet that recommends looking around for a parent, then calling 000. Also found that 48 kids in the US died in hot cars last year. I guess I would definitely ring 000, but I’m not sure I would have before this thread.
I checked “Call 911,” and I would…just to let them know I’m taking out the window if they aren’t there in 30 seconds.
I certainly wouldn’t want to be explaining what happened to the police while the car owner is with another officer explaining how that madman tried to steal their baby when they were walking around their car to get him out.
Calling 911 and breaking the window with their approval would be my choice.
Put me on the list of calling 911 before anything else. Sorry, in this day and age, I’m just not taking out a car window without the dispatcher telling me to. I’d rather leave that to the cops. But then, as I’ve mentioned before, I live in a city with a fast response time. If I called 911 from my grocery store, I’d have at least one officer there with two minutes and probably 2 to 3 more showing up over the next 5 minutes.
There’s just too many situations where you’d be the one in trouble. For every person that forgets their kid in a hot car, there’s hundreds that put their kid in the car and go to put their shopping cart away and stop to talk to someone for two minutes (remember how many people wanted to break the window within seconds of seeing the baby, that’s not even enough time to look up and see if the owner is walking towards the car) or just pulled in and left their kid in the still cool car while they ran to get a shopping cart to put the car seat in.
Yeah, after thinking again I’d examine the car before calling 911, but I’d do it fast. I had a situation in a grocery store parking lot a few months ago where I saw what appeared to be a toddler alone in a car, sitting in the driver’s seat with the engine running.
My initial reaction was “Holy shit, I’ve gotta call the police!” Not because it was hot out (it wasn’t, and the window was open), but because there was a toddler in the driver’s seat of a running car with no supervision. I mean, come on. But I went over to look first and discovered that there was an adult lying down in the back seat. I still think this behavior was abject stupidity, but not worthy of the cops. So I walked off shaking my head and muttering.
My random guess is that the adult probably didn’t feel good and his/her spouse was in the store getting something while he was laying down in the air conditioned car. I assume he wasn’t asleep and I can’t really think of much a toddler can do to a running car that could put anyone in danger. He could rev the engine, crank the radio, play with the windows, honk the horn etc. All obnoxious and all would probably be stopped pretty quickly be the adult, but I doubt he’d get his foot on the brake and the gear shift moved* on his own. As a migraine sufferer, I can sympathize. Granted, if I was in this situation, I’d leave my kid belted in while my SO ran into a store, but if I happened upon this scenario it’s what I would assume was going on.
*This would of course be different if it was a stick shift car. I’d be worried about the kid hitting the stick and the car lurching forward before the engine died.
If you want to see a truly bizarre situation, for a few days in a row when I would be waiting to pick up my daughter from school I would witness this scene happening. I know it’s hard to see, but if you look on the windshield of that car, you’ll see a kid, probably about 4 years old. Grandpa would sit in the car smoking cigarettes, the kid would climb out the driver side door, across the (steep) windshield, and in the driver side window (yes, through the window) and back around to do it again. It always seemed kind of surreal that he would let his kid/grandkid do that. One misstep and he’d be on the pavement, and that’s a pretty far fall.
Possibly. I come from a family where we were not even allowed to sit in the driver’s seat with the engine OFF until we were teenagers, so my perspective may be warped. We were taught that the driver’s seat is for the driver, who understands how to operate the car and understands that it is not a toy to be played with but a big machine that can do serious damage. I was just aghast that the kid wasn’t belted into a car seat, because my parents would never in a million years have allowed such a thing. Again, though, warped perspective.
I bet your younger then me. I’m 30, I didn’t start wearing a seatbelt until I was 18 (at my then girlfriend’s request). I was one generation short of sleeping up in the back window on long trips. I was driven home from the hospital, after being born, on my mom’s lap.
We moved around while the car was driving. I used to sit on my dad’s lap and ‘steer’ the car from the street into the garage. But then my dad was a car guy and I grew up pretty comfortable around cars, and like I said, I guess it could be unnerving seeing a toddler in the driver’s seat of a running car, but there’s not really much he could do (except make some noise) without a lot of things going wrong at the same time. OTOH, if all those things did happen at the same time, there would be a lot of people making dirty looks at people like me who say things like this.
Of course, we also have to keep in mind, there’s a lot of really, really stupid people in this world. Way to often we hear a news story about someone who had their 8 year old drive them home from the bar or other stupid crap like that, so you never know.
Where do you live? In places like Texas, Arizona, Southern California, Florida, a closed car with no air conditioner running will quickly reach a lethal temperature during summer months. If 48 kids in the USA died from being locked in a hot car, you can bet hundreds of them were hospitalized for it. It’s very, very dangerous.
“The doors are all locked”… sorry, and I’m supposed to know this how, without checking? Am I supposed to be checking that the doors are locked before I notice the kid seems unconscious? Since I’m not a car thief, I’ll have to assume I received this information from the Holy Ghost, in which case and since He’s handy, I’m having Him take the baby out 
Given the low probability of that, I’d stick my head into the grocery store (they’re small around here) and ask “anybody left a kid in a [car brand] outside?” while taking out my cellphone. The OP doesn’t say the kid’s suffused, could be asleep and the car have the a/c on.