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.
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.