Study of Unattended Children Fatalities in Parked Passenger Cars

Abstract

An Investigation has been carried out on the fatalities of unattended children due to the internal environmental conditions inside the parked passenger cars. The study considers the social, behavioural and technological aspect of the extremely serious conditions of the passenger cars in Indian sub-continent which is alarming and increasing now-a-days. The critical review on various aspects have been collected for the children fatalities in parked passenger cars during the recent period of five years from now in India. To validate the collected data via, newspaper reports were prime source of data reported from various news reports of the television channels, e-papers, and printed news papers in the different parts of the country. All the cases of children fatalities were in the age group of two years to ten years in past five years of duration considering the children fatalities occurred across India. Interestingly, no cases of fatality were observed below the age of two years.

Majority of the cases were observed in the northern part of India mainly around national capital region (51.2 %) while 26.8 % cases were in western India and rest from south central India. These types of fatalities are increasing every year in India, which is not only alarming as a social perspective but also unfortunate as a technical point of view for all automobile industries. In most of the cases, children were trapped inside the vehicle due to the automatic locking of doors, release of harmful gases, interiors of the passenger cabin, incomplete switching off the engine and air-conditioner section and other possible reasons. There is a strong need of the government regulations, design amendment, public awareness campaign and technological modification in the passenger cabin or throughout the design of the vehicle to alarm and avoid such type of fatalities.