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.
Why was the car off when he returned if he left it running with the AC on?
It’s a tragedy, but if I’m on the jury I’m not sure I would convict him.
Most modern cars have an auto-off feature. Some have a button to temporarily disable it.
Mine is one such car but it only turns itself off while in drive to save gas at stoplights and such. It doesn’t turn itself off when running while in park.
My 2020 VW Golf definitely turns itself off when in park, but also has the button to disable it.
It will even require a manual restart if it’s been parked long enough, which gets annoying when I spend a little too long dropping off/picking up something, and don’t notice the message, put it in drive, see the message and try to start the car, but can’t until I put it back in park. /rant
I do hate that you can’t permanently disable the feature. Disabling it has (mostly) become a standard part of my startup procedure, but every once in a while I get in a hurry and forget. It makes me unreasonably irritated when I do and the car turns off at an intersection even though all I have to do is slightly lift my foot on the brake not even enough to release the brake. Then I get irritated at myself for forgetting and again for getting irritated so easily.
My car tracks how much idle time it has saved and after 3 years I’m still at something like 10 seconds…
IMHO, you shouldn’t be able to permanently disable it. We are in a climate crisis.
It’s fine for 95% of use cases, but sucks for the rest. But having anyone restrict my ability to make choices for what is best for me and my situation puts a black mark on my book.
You’re thinking of the auto start-stop feature. That is a different feature which aims to save gas while you press the brake pedal.
What others in the thread are talking about is a feature that will fully power off the vehicle after it has been sitting idle for a longer period of time. This includes turning off the engine and any of the electronics that normally continue to run during the auto start-stop.
Because it looks like it may have been a tesla and those are failure machines for idiots.
The car probably had “AI” face detection of vulnerable children in high heat conditions which then triggered a “surge subscription” notification on the app. “Upgrade to infant climate+ NOW, in the next 2 minutes, or your air conditioning will be temporarily shifted to heater until you decide to upgrade. Thank you.”
In this kind of heat, it probably shut down due to heat sensors determining the only other option was to catch fire.
I suppose it’s possible if the cooling system isn’t functioning correctly, but as far as I know, properly functioning, it should be able to idle in triple digits just fine.
Yes.
Dad also should have been able to knowingly remove child from car instead of knowingly leave child in car.
But the computer in the car might not be okay in that kind of heat, or even the battery depending on the type. I’ll be honest, didn’t read the article so I don’t know what kind of car or even if the article says why it turned off.
Either way it’s rough. These kinds of stories always make me think just how easily something like this can happen. Again, didn’t read the article, and I don’t have kids so no firsthand experience, but I hear how tired you are all the time for the first few years as a parent. Imagine running errands, you pop inside to grab something and sit for just a second to catch your breath. Next thing you know you snap awake and it’s half an hour later, you run out to the car to grab the kid and… 😞
Any number of things can go wrong in any number of situations, but you can’t effectively live life accounting for all of them to possibly happen all the time.
Not saying it was the best decision but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think the car would keep the AC on.
It’s definitely a tragedy. The article is too light on information to convict was all I was saying.
They knowingly left their 2 year old alone for 30-60 minutes. That’s already illegal.
Wow, so it would be illegal for parents to sleep? Gtfo
I’m not saying that. However, it’s highly recommended that toddlers have baby monitors with them while they sleep. So even if the parents were sleeping, their child’s distress should wake them up. This child was unattended, unobserved, etc.
A lot of things are illegal that aren’t murder.
Leaving a two-year-old alone in a car for 30-60 minutes (he doesn’t even know how long he was gone) isn’t criminal in and of itself regardless of the weather. On top of that, he knew it was in the triple digits and he’s also not so stupid that he doesn’t know that cars can break down. I don’t know what to tell you. I just hope you aren’t responsible for any toddlers.
… ummmm, yes it is. Leaving a toddler unattended for an extended period of time is literally multiple crimes.
Oops. Meant is criminal.
My mom’s car, a mid-'10s Acura, will turn itself off if you leave with the key and get too far away from the car for too long without enabling valet mode.
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.