AA’s roadservice team gets about 760 callouts each year for kids locked in cars and another 650 for pets.
On a 30-degree day, it only takes five minutes for the temperature inside a car to reach 39 degrees. Within 30 mnutes, it will be 49 degrees.
"It doesn’t matter what sort of colour the car is, if its darker coloured car or lighter coloured car. It doesn’t matter if you crack a window a little bit. It’s still going to get too hot too quick inside the vehicle,” AA service officer Brett Swanson says.
AA general manager of roadside solutions, Bashir Khan told TVNZ1’s Seven Sharp that one of the dangers of getting trapped in a car is that "people are always in a rush to do things".
“Some of the things that we see every day is parents rushing off — a few minutes just to go in to the shop to buy groceries,” he says.
While thinking they will only be away for a “quick second”, taking groceries into the house, things can go downhill fast.
“In this short space of time, they don’t realise they’ve left the keys in the car or they leave the keys in the hands of the kids.
“It’s probably the worst thing they can do. So you end up with a situation where the kid starts playing with the key, presses a button and then starts the problem,” Khan says.
He says professionally trained staff are on hand and have several methods of getting into the car without breaking the window, which he says is a last resort.
Parking in the shade, Khan says, is a misconception, as the temperature can rise very quickly.
“Regardless of whether it’s in the shade or in the sun, it’s basically very little difference.
“It gets hot very quickly. So we have to basically be mindful that cracking a window and thinking that will be OK doesn’t actually work.”
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