I have a tendancy to think in black and white. Things are good or bad, right or wrong; there is no in between. I am slowly learning to notice the 'grey areas' - the 'just okay' or 'not the best' or 'it was fun except'.
But sometimes there are no gray areas.
I don't think I have to name names for people to know who I'm talking about when I refer to the little boy who died when his father left him in a hot car all day recently. I don't think I have to rehash the details of the case for people to recall the evidence. If you've read it or heard it once, you haven't forgotten it. By now, enough evidence has come out to charge the boy's father with homicide. It is my professional opinion as a public health scholar that the decision to charge the father is the only one supported by the evidence. It is my personal opinion that there is nothing more horrifying than thinking a parent could ever do this to their own child.
This horrific case has called the entire nation's attention to an even larger problem: dozens of children die this way each year. I can't even imagine how many animals die in the same way. And even if someone manages to get to them before they die, being trapped in a hot car is pure torture.
How do I know? Well, today I watched the video of the veteranarian who locked himself in a hot car for 30 minutes. And it made me think. That man looked pretty miserable. But it was only thirty minutes. And he wasn't in a rear facing car seat, the sun shining down on him through the rear window... and the windows were cracked, as he stated, like you would crack them for a pet.
How much worse must it be for a child, strapped into a rear facing car seat for hours, with no open windows whatsoever?
So I decided to find out. This is the part where I post really horrible pictures of myself to prove a point.
It's only 81 degrees outside today. The day that little boy died, it was 92. Eleven degrees hotter. Here is a snapshot of the weather when I began my experiment:
Not bad at all. Nice day for a walk or a bike ride. Not really even hot enough that I would want to go swimming.
To recreate common conditions, I turned my car on and let the air conditioning cool it to a temperature that was comfortable to me in the front seat. I installed a rear facing car seat in the center back seat of my car, exactly how I would install it to transport a child. Then I turned the car off and got in.
When I started out, everything was pretty normal even a minute or two into the experiment.
1:52 pm: The temperature in the car was about 30 degrees Celsius, which translates to about 86 degrees F. For comparison's sake, it dips to 25 C inside my air conditioned house. This was taken only a couple minutes after turning off the air conditioning in the car.
1:57 pm (5 minutes elapsed): My body temperature was normal. 98.5 degrees F - just about perfect.
I made notes to myself in my cell phone along the way.
At 2:00 (8 minutes elapsed), I wrote "getting hard to breathe". The air was a bit thick but I settled in and started to read my book.
At 2:11 (19 minutes elapsed), I wrote "Hard to think about anything else". I meant anything other than how uncomfortable I was and how much I wanted to get out of the car. I couldn't believe how quickly my formerly air conditioned car was becoming unbearable.
At 2:18 (26 minutes elapsed), I wrote "sweating all over". I later laughed at that note, because really only my legs had began to sweat. My legs were most directly in the sunlight and I'm not a heavy sweater so I didn't really expect to sweat from anywhere else.
2:20 pm (28 minutes elapsed): I took the first picture of myself. I looked... okay, well, I looked horrible, but to be honest I was actually already pretty uncomfortable when I took this first picture. It had been nearly a half an hour and had the circumstances been different I would've already gotten out of the car for some air even on this cool day. But only my legs were perspiring and my skin tone is fairly even.
At 2:21 pm (29 minutes elapsed), I write "Stopped reading". At this point I had become unable to focus on the book I was reading and set it aside in favor of slouching down in the car seat and closing my eyes.
2:23 pm (31 minutes elapsed): The thermometer reads approximately 35 degrees C, or 95 degrees F.
2:24 pm (32 minutes elapsed): The first real beads of sweat begin to roll down my legs. My body temperature reads 98.8.
At 2:27 pm (35 minutes elapsed), I write "Stifling and pouring sweat, dripping down both legs." Little did I know I would later yearn for the time when only my legs were sweating and the temperature remained in the double digits.
At 2:34 pm (42 minutes elapsed), I notice "[the] breath I exhale feels like cool breeze". It occurred to me at this point that an adult would start fanning themselves, but a toddler wouldn't know to do this, so I didn't do it either.
2:39 pm (47 minutes elapsed): I'm starting to look pretty worse for the wear, my face is blotchy and shines with tiny pearls of sweat.
At 2:41 pm (49 minutes elapsed), I note "it is getting really hard to breathe". I remember it occuring to me that I should elaborate on that more, but I didn't have the energy. I wanted to describe how close the air felt to my face, like when I was a little kid and I was hiding from the monsters in my room with my head under the covers trying to breathe through my comforter.
2:51 pm (59 minutes elapsed): Nearing the one hour mark, I take another picture. These are starting to get pretty bad. I note that "all [of my] skin [is] wet and clammy, [and the air] feels suffocating." This is the point at which it actually started to feel like someone was pressing a pillow over my face. I knew I wouldn't be able to stand much more.
At 2:55 pm (64 minutes elapsed), I comment that "beads of sweat [are] popping up all over [my] legs". I take a few pictures over the next five minutes. My thinking has become disorganized and confused, the methodical approach to my experiment deteriorating.
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| Sweat running down my leg |
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| Beads of sweat like pox marks on my shins |
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| I know my face will soon be pouring sweat as well. |
After this point I make no more notes. I lack the energy and mental capacity to complete this simple task. What remains are only pictures.
3:01 pm (69 minutes elapsed): The mercury is reading close to 40 degrees C, or 104 F. Remember, it is only 81 F outside! I take a series of pictures. My face, my drenched arm, my crossed legs with sweat beading all over them, the beginnings of drips of sweat on my face. I am disoriented and take more pictures than I intended to.
3:05 pm (73 minutes elapsed): I'm pretty much continually taking pictures at this point as I notice new issues every moment. My face is now dripping with sweat. My legs look like I've been caught in a rainstorm. Sweat drips down my back and chest and soaks my clothes.
3:08 pm (76 minutes elapsed): I decide I'm done with the experiment and start to get a few last pictures. The thermometer is reading over 40 C so I know it is at least 105 F in the car. I take my body temperature and it comes out to 99.1. The final few pictures of myself show me literally pouring sweat. I remember hearing it drip from my elbow onto the seat of the car, and wondering what made that noise, before realizing that *I* was actually dripping onto the car.
At this point I'm shaking so badly I have to take nearly all of the photos twice. I take a short video of myself to show how bad I am shaking which I am not adding at this time as I haven't watched it and I know I was pretty delirious.
I can't get out of the car fast enough. I fumble with the lock.
At 3:12 pm, after one hour and twenty minutes, I emerge from the car. The outside air at 81 degrees feels crisp and like life itself and I drink it in. I am suddenly overcome by an aversion to being in the car or even near it, even though my rational mind knows I was in control the whole time. Still, I keep the door open as I gather up my things and move it to a slightly more shaded area. My clothes and skin are soaked in sweat and all I can think of is the hose beside the house, and how much I want to just turn it on and pour it over my head.
For the sake of research I only splash the hose water on my face, arms and legs before going in the house. There I change into dry clothes and take a look at the shirt I wore for this experiment. It's a medium tone, not white, not black. You can only tell it's wet by noticing the disparity between the sparse lighter, dry portions and the rest. The back is nearly all wet. I'm still not thinking clearly.
The final temperature in the car was over 105 degrees F. In an hour and twenty minutes, the temperature rose to over 20 degrees higher than the outdoor temperature. My body temperature went up from 98.5 to 99.1, over half a degree and enough to qualify as a low grade fever. My mental senses began to deteriorate, my body poured sweat, and at the very end, I began to shake so hard it actually scared me as to whether I could get out of the car fast enough. It was a horrible ordeal that I wouldn't wish on anyone, even though I did it voluntarily.
This is what dozens of children go through every year... only they can't crawl out and peel off their sweaty clothes... they're strapped into car seats, too little to know what's going on... I can only imagine what comes after the shaking.
This is inexcusable. Look, I know that accidents happen, and parents like the ones who have been in the news lately are the exception, not the rule. Oftentimes when this happens it is a genuine accident and the grief-stricken parent is left racked with guilt forever. But this is exactly why we need a wake up call.
Leave your purse, your wallet, your cell phone, your briefcase - something you need, in the back seat next to your child's car seat every time you get in the car. Start making a habit of looking in the back seat - even if you KNOW you don't have any children with you... because all it takes is one time of being wrong to end a life. Let's all take action to make SURE this isn't allowed to happen any more.
And as for the people in the news... the evidence speaks for itself. What they did is horrible in ways that I could not imagine, more evil than I naively thought existed in this world. There will be a trial, a judge, and a jury, but I already know the verdict. Dying this way, as dozens of children do every year, is torture. That it could be anything less than an honest mistake is unfathomable and amounts to intentionally torturing a child to death. That *defines* murder. Yes, it really is that black and white.
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