Topic: Other Risks to Children’s Safety

The topic of safe sleep has been in regulatory and legal news lately as the risk of infant death in products called “inclined sleepers” has begun to spur action (see box below). Inclined sleepers are portable sleep devices that put a baby’s back at an angle of up to about 30 degrees. Over the past 15 or so years, these devices have been linked to infant airway obstruction (from head flopping) or suffocation (from rolling into the padding or partially out of the device). These incidents have led to dozens of infant deaths, with 74 reported to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in 2019 alone. Read More from “Safe Sleep (and CRs) Back in the News”

Mere days before National Heatstroke Prevention Day on May 1, a 5-month-old baby girl in North Carolina was this year’s first victim of vehicular heatstroke. SRN reminds readers that heatstroke death is 100% preventable!  Please utilize the extensive resources that exist to educate caregivers on this topic

Heatstroke Prevention Resources

Find free resources and information from the following sources:

• KidsandCars.org
• NHTSA’s In and Around the Car program (English)
  NHTSA’s In and Around the Car program  (Español)
• No Heatstroke
• Safe Kids Worldwide

Heatstroke Prevention Online Training

The National Safety Council (NSC) offers an online training module called “Children in Hot Cars.” This interactive training uses graphics, audio, and video to teach three main topics related to child heatstroke dangers:

• Why do cars heat up?
• How do children die in hot cars?
• What can YOU do?

The learner can progress at his or her own pace, following links to supporting studies, lists, and information found at the NSC site and others, such as noheatstroke.org and CDC.gov. Although the learner may opt to linger over an array of helpful links, the basic module takes only about 10 minutes to complete.

The training offers many practical tips to prevent heatstroke deaths and is suitable for any audience: CPSTs, caregivers, or any other member of the public.

Go to www.nsc.org and search “kids in hot cars” or click here to find the module. A certificate of completion is provided at the end of the training.

Heatstroke Prevention Bill

To learn about a bill, reintroduced to Congress in May 2021, that would require new vehicles to have built-in technology to remind people when a child has been left inside, click here. This site offers many other resources, including descriptions of the latest child-detection technology for vehicles and guidance for those who’d like to write to their legislator in support of the act.

SRN recently heard from Carma McKinnon, Idaho’s CPS coordinator located at Lemhi County Sheriff’s Department, regarding concerns over ATVs and UTVs.  ATVs (all-terrain vehicles, aka quads) and UTVs (utility-task vehicles, aka side-by-sides, recreational off-road vehicles, or ROVs) are used by families across the country for both recreation and work purposes, but can be extremely dangerous to children.

McKinnon noted that ATVs and UTVs are very popular in her state, and this seems to be the case across the country, with the largest sales volumes found in rural areas, especially in the South and Midwest.  Sales have grown substantially over the past 10 years.  Based on data from the Motorcycle Industry Council and the Specialty Equipment Market Association, roughly 250,000 ATVs are sold in the U.S. each year.  Sales of UTVs have been even hotter; this newer market entry has surpassed ATVs in sales, with around 400,000 currently sold per year.  Sales of these vehicles fluctuate with the strength of the economy, so they may vary widely from year to year.

Read More from “Off-Road Vehicles Pose a Big Risk for Kids”

Over the past thirty years, the rate of obesity has doubled for children ages 2-5 and 12-15, and tripled for kids ages 6-11. Kim Hermann, Safe Kids USA, discussed how obesity presents challenges for child passengers.

Read More from “Childhood Obesity and CPS”