<p>Does that mean that when I tell my 3-year-old not to go near a boiling pot, or close to the fireplace, or play in the street, I should now also be showing him the release inside the trunk, and teaching him how to use it, in the event that he should get locke inside?</p>
<p>EmeraldKity - I apologize for being harsh - you touched a nerve, as I’m sure you could tell! The problem is that people like Leno and Limbaugh repeat these phony stories (for entertainment and political propaganda purposes, respectively) and others repeat them, and repeat them, and repeat them. After a while the bogus “frivolous litigation” tsunami has become accepted as fact based on sheer repetition of phony stories. In fact, the amount of litigation has declined on a per capita basis over the past 30 years, and a number of “reforms” have been instituted which prevent the pursuit of entirely valid claims by regular middle class people who have been cheated, injured, etc. Another example of very real rights being taken away from average people based on a phony “threat”.</p>
<p>Well of course, Chocoholic, you should tell your children everything you can and that they can absorb about and for their saftey.</p>
<p>But I don’t think that was the real thrust of your question. Regardless of what you tell your kids, Chocoholic, it does mean that if your 3 year old does touch the pot and scalds himself or gets 3rd degree burns from the fireplace or gets hit by a car on he street, then…</p>
<p>when you call 911 and the police or EMTs come, you should expect them to know the basics of their trade: how to administer emergency first aid, what to look for in injuries; should the child be moved, or what emergency treatments should be begun. You should not expect them to wonder around cluelessly or have to refer the the manual or to ignore obvious basic symptoms and treatment.</p>
<p>Now I am not at all saying this happened or that the police were wrong or to blame. But apparently the police chief and town has severely criticised the performance of the police themselves. In that case, there may well be a question as to whether this was a tragic set of unavoidable mistakes or an incidence of poor training and preparedness.</p>
<p>And it may also get auto makers to do something about trunk locks if things like this happen often enough. Perhaps you don’t recall “Unsafe at any speed” and what it took to get auto makers to correct known design flaws in the corvair, or the flamable gas tank in Police Crown Vic cruisers, fixed pointy hood ornaments or many other known design errors, which would never have been corrected without law suits.</p>
<p>mhc48, what I was really trying to say is, even with safety releases inside the trunk, how many kids would be taught of their existence, where they are located, or how to use them.</p>
<p>Anyway, all said and done, I am shocked that the police did not look inside the trunk, but I am horrified that the parents did not first look in there, after knowing that the kids often played around the car.</p>
<p>All I know, is that if this had to happen to me, I would be beside myself with grief and guilt for not checking inside the trunk.</p>
<p>Did anyone see one of the boy’s mothers on T.V., before the kids were found, saying something like, “Please come home baby, mommy’s not mad at you anymore, I promise that you will not be in any trouble.”</p>
<p>Another odd moment.</p>
<p>I can’t help after reading some of hte news reports thinking that there is more to the story
I read that the children had hidden or played in the cars but that this was then denied, I read that their shoes were visible or at least in the passenger area, but that the car doors were mostly locked</p>
<p>My youngest daughter when she was about 6 or 7 would flip out if I even looked crosseyed at her. Any loud or harsh voice she ran away from. Once she took off out the front door when I was angry about something, I thought she ran off down the street and I went around several blocks on foot looking for her before I came back and got the car to go look.
When I started driving around, she popped up in the back to ask me if I was still mad. I about wet my pants.
I was glad she was safe, very glad, but I was much more careful about making sure the car was locked from then on, even in the driveway.</p>
<p>I agree with you on those sentiments, Choc.</p>
<p>You might be interested to read these two items I found on the web:</p>
<p>At least 1,250 people, since 1970, have been victims of trunk entrapment, and at least 260 people have died as a result. This number includes both adults who were imprisoned by criminals, and children who unintentionally locked themselves in. By 2001, all new cars will be required to have release handles inside trunks in order to prevent deaths from entrapment, under a proposal by federal regulators.</p>
<p>According to federal safety officials, 11 children died last summer after crawling into trunks to play. It is a sad fact that a child can die within 20 minutes after being locked into a hot trunk. Freezers and refrigerators are required by law to be escapable, but until this recent proposal, trunks have not been. Anyone can become a target of trunk entrapment, but with some simple awareness and planning, you can protect yourself and your children.</p>
<p>To Protect Your Children:</p>
<pre><code>* Never leave your children alone or unsupervised even for a few minutes.
- Never leave your car keys where children can access them.
- Always make sure your car is locked so that children cannot access a car unsupervised.
- Do not underestimate your children’s capabilities. If there is a way in, they will figure it out.
- Teach your children about the dangers of a car, especially the car trunk.
- Arm your children with the facts. Practice escape techniques the same way you would handle a fire drill to show children how to get out of a burning building. If your child is put into the trunk, make sure that they know how to yank out the tail light wires. Instruct them to kick out the brake light fixture and signal for help with their hand through the broken brake light fixture. If the police stop the car, bang on the trunk and scream.
</code></pre>
<p>Here’ s a copy of Report to Congress in 2000. I don’t know if the law ever passed.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.kidsandcars.org/incidents/trunk/news/truckentrapment_congress.html[/url]”>http://www.kidsandcars.org/incidents/trunk/news/truckentrapment_congress.html</a></p>
<p>You know what, now that you mention it BrightFuture, how did that video come to be? There just happened to be some family member with a video recorder, randomly taping the father looking for tools in the trunk? What? That is quite odd, that the horrific moment of opening the trunk of an abandoned vehicle, to look for tools that you store there, and finding 3 kids’ bodies lying there, should be on video</p>
<p>A news station was taping it. When the father opened the trunk, he started jumping around and screaming. Then this other lady that was on a cell phone started crying.</p>
<p>*o Protect Your Children:</p>
<ul>
<li>Never leave your children alone or unsupervised even for a few minutes.</li>
<li>Never leave your car keys where children can access them.</li>
<li>Always make sure your car is locked so that children cannot access a car unsupervised.</li>
<li>Do not underestimate your children’s capabilities. If there is a way in, they will figure it out.</li>
<li>Teach your children about the dangers of a car, especially the car trunk.</li>
<li>Arm your children with the facts. Practice escape techniques the same way you would handle a fire drill to show children how to get out of a burning building. If your child is put into the trunk, make sure that they know how to yank out the tail light wires. Instruct them to kick out the brake light fixture and signal for help with their hand through the broken brake light fixture. If the police stop the car, bang on the trunk and scream.*</li>
</ul>
<p>all good ideas Im sure- and after reading about accidents to little kids, the 2 year olds who slip out of the house and drown in the pool or pond, the 11 year old who made her mom pull over when she saw a tortoise trying to cross the road and was hit by a car and killed, the 14 yr old who tried to get a shoe in a deceptively slow moving river and was killed along with her father and a friend who tried to save her. so many things to think about.
But I seriously have to laugh about the car keys- 3/4 of the time my kids were the only ones who knew where they were!</p>
<p>Looking into it further, the law requiring inside trunk unlocking devices was passed and became effective 2001. The Toyota involved here was a 1992. That being the case, it would seem if he sues Toyota, as though the attorney is pushing it… looking for some way to make law (regarding used car sales??) help the parents, or well…just to make a buck.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t be surprised if, given the stron Camden self criticism, public sympathy etc, there will be some sort of settlement somewhere down the line.</p>
<p>Facts are just wonderful things. Remember the story of the phone booth (a dying breed now)? A man was on the phone in one of those old public phone booths. An out-of-control car came down the road, went up on the curb, and hit the man in the phone booth. He sued either AT&T or the city, can’t remember which. </p>
<p>I first heard that story, and thought it was ridiculous - another case of frivolous suit, etc. etc. </p>
<p>Then I heard the rest of the facts. The man saw the car coming, and tried to get out of the booth and out of the path of the car. He couldn’t get the door to open. Turns out many people had gotten stuck in that exact same phone booth, and had complained both verbally and in writing, over a long period of time. No one had bothered to try to fix it.</p>
<p>So, as in the case of the hot coffee, additional facts can really change the story. Was the defective phone booth 100% at fault? No. But it was definitely not a frivolous suit, either.</p>
<p>As for the Camden story - one of the problems with the police search is that guidelines for searching for missing children were published for police back in 1998. One of the major guidelines is to look in all closed areas including (as specified in the guidelines) refrigerators and car trunks. The Camden police didn’t look in the car trunk. Spin it any way you want in terms of woulda coulda shoulda, but that’s a skew up. Were they the only ones who messed up? No. But they messed up. No question.</p>