Ministers back bill aimed at preventing kids being left in cars

Government ministers gave the go-ahead Sunday to legislation that aims at stemming a rash of children dying after being left in cars by requiring caregivers to check on absent kids to make sure they are with their parents.

The proposal, which still must get approval from the full Knesset, would require kindergarten teachers and caregivers at daycare centers to notify parents if a child does not show up within an hour of the beginning of the day.

The vote in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation comes amid a summer that has seen five young children killed, and more hospitalized, in the last two months after being mistakenly left in cars.

Several of those cases have involved parents forgetting their children in vehicles but thinking they had dropped them off with caregivers.

The ruling would apply as an official directive by the Education and Economy ministries.

On Friday, a 16-month old girl was left in a closed car for two hours in Beitar Ilit, a settlement in the West Bank. Paramedics who were called to the parked car found the girl with neither a pulse nor respiratory activity as a result of a massive heatstroke, Army Radio reported. She was pronounced dead on arrival at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem.

Earlier this month a 4-year-old boy died in Rahat, a Bedouin city near Beersheba. His parents brought him to a local clinic in a state of clinical death, and he was pronounced dead at Soroka Hospital. Police are investigating whether his parents were guilty of neglect by leaving him in a vehicle exposed to the sun for hours.

On July 8, an eight-month-old girl died after being left in a locked car in the southern Israeli city of Arad. The child’s grandmother was suspected to have left the child in the car for several hours.

That death came a month after two young brothers died in the Negev town of Hura in June, and in May a baby died in Ashdod after being left in a car for three hours.

Since 2008, 23 children have died in Israel as a result of being left inside a closed vehicle, where temperatures can easily reach 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius) when parked in the summer sun.

Israeli media reported on at least 381 cases involving 428 children who were found in cars unable to leave, according to the Safe Kids Israel nonprofit. In 60 percent of the cases, children were left inside the vehicle by caretakers. The remaining cases were of children who locked themselves in a car.

JTA contributed to this report.