A 2-year-old girl has died after her father left her in a hot car in Arizona, where residents are enduring triple-digit temperatures, according to authorities.
The father was running errands with his daughter, and when he returned home Tuesday afternoon, he allegedly knowingly left the 2-year-old in the car, Marana Police Capt. Tim Brunenkant told ABC News.
He left the car running and the air conditioning on, Brunenkant said.
The dad went into the house, and when he returned to the car between 30 and 60 minutes later, the car was off, Brunenkant said.
Many modern vehicles automatically turn off after 30-60 minutes idling “to save fuel”. I order to turn it off you have to hit the A button on the dash. it’s proven to be deadly.
Just curious, what kind of deadly situation is created when people leave their cars idling for so long?
I’m the kind of person that turns the car off if there is a train coming and I need to wait 5 minutes. I can’t imagine leaving the car running for more than a couple of minutes.
I think if the car is turned on with a button and the key is replaced with a card that works at a distance, a feature that turns the car off when sitting idle for a while seems like a sensible thing. It’s way more likely to be on by mistake than left running for a reason.
But would love to hear what kind of situations there are, I’m just unfamiliar with them.
First obviously you don’t want to let a car idle in an enclosed space. That’s deadly to anyone in the car/garage but also potentially to folks inside the house if it is poorly ventilated.
I would definitely want the car running in 111 degree heat, even when stopped for a train or in a fast food line.
On the other hand, my vehicle, a Chevy Volt PHEV will turn itself off after about 4 hours. While this seems logical, a lot of people who camp inside it or use it to power their camp gear find it really inconvenient to have everything turn off at 1AM. So they recommend a hair tie around the gear shift button to keep the car from turning off.
So there are reasons both for having an auto-off feature and for not having it.