Summer Safety: Feel Free to Smash Car Windows
Most people with common sense will tell you that the best places to be this summer are either indoors or in the shade. Direct sunlight, as wonderful as it might be when we’re vacationing at the beach, is not something that we necessarily want for more than, say, twenty minutes at a time. This is especially true in early afternoons, when the day is at its hottest.
If we, grown adults, refuse to stay in the sun, then there is absolutely no excuse to allow a child or pet to do so. Every summer, the local news reports that at least one child or pet has died because he or she was left in a car parked directly in the sun. It’s usually a parking lot, but sometimes it’s at home. Day-care workers have actually forgotten that they had an infant in the back of the van, and have left it parked in the sun all day. Surprisingly, it did not occur to these employees that there was a child missing somewhere in the day-care facility, nor did they think to check in said vans until it was too late.
There is no excuse for this, whether it is intentional or not. Common sense should come into play when we are dealing with children and pets, both of whom deserve humane treatment at the minimum.
Cracking the windows so that there is a slight bit of air coming in on a child or pet while the adult shops for an hour is not good enough. If it is 90F outside, then it can be over 120F inside the car in just a few minutes. This is true even if the car is parked in the shade, as cars tend to take on many of the attributes of pizza ovens. It is enclosed. It is hot. It is deadly, even to adults. Children and pets will feel the effects, and suffer the deadly consequences, faster than able-bodied adults.
We really do not have to see the tests that news crews perform for the big stories of the night. Most of us already know that it is hot in these cars: even before the news crew showed us the fake baby, complete with electrical sensors and other measurement devices to replicate the human body’s reactions and internal temperatures, we knew.
Even if it is the middle of spring – gorgeous, mild weather – it still is not safe to leave any living thing in a vehicle. If the heat does not get that child or pet, then a thief or kidnapper might. What if someone barrels through the parking lot and accidentally smashes into that parked car? If it is a child, what if he or she decides to go inside looking for Mommy or Daddy, unaware of the fact that cars are very big and very dangerous for someone so young and small? There is nothing to say that these things are impossible because it has happened many times before. So have other accidents, disasters, and just plain bad things.
There is no excuse for the people who do these things, but they do it anyway. This is why the rest of us – those with enough common sense to realize that something is very wrong about this type of behavior – should do something about it.
If you see a child or pet locked inside a hot car, call the police on your cell phone. If you don’t have a phone, go to a pay phone or go back inside the store. Report the license plate number and location of the vehicle so that the police and any other agency involved can easily find the culprit. You should also include a basic description of the vehicle. “Green Ford pickup” is a good description, but “light-green Ford pickup with a bashed-in tailgate” is even better.
Once you have established that a crime is being committed – because it is, in fact, a crime to abuse children or animals in this manner – return to your vehicle and locate your tire iron. If you have a baseball bat, that will work as well. After wrapping your arm and hand in a towel or other cloth to protect yourself, go to the window that is farthest from the trapped pet or human and smash it. Hit it several times if you must. Bash it to pieces. Reach inside and unlock the door so that you can open it and allow that living thing to get some air.
Do not let the fear of a lawsuit or criminal charges prevent you from doing the right thing. If you have called in the negligence of the parent or owner before you perform the rescue, you should be covered. If not, you can usually find help with an animal-rights organization or a child-protection agency.
Do the right thing. It might lead to a hassle in the near future, but you will not have a problem with your conscience over allowing another living thing to suffer and die.
