Monitoring of ambient outdoor temperature and interior vehicle temperature in Johor Bahru, Malaysia

A five-year-old child had been left in his mother's car for about six hours. He was already unresponsive when he was discovered. He had been certified dead upon arrival at a private hospital but there was no documentation of high body temperature. The preliminary weather analyses showed that for the period of the occurrence, the outdoor weather had ambient temperatures between 24 and 31 degrees C. Our aim was to prove that even in the morning, the risk of heat illness is significant inside a vehicle. We measured the ambient outdoor temperature and interior vehicle temperature on four different clear days. The vehicle was parked in full sun, oriented 180 degrees to the sun's rays. The thermometer was placed on the dashboard but not in direct contact with any part of the car. Recordings were made with closed windows. Benchmark temperatures were measured in the same manner and location of the vehicle each time to ensure consistency. The vehicle and ambient air temperatures were relatively similar early in the day but diverged rapidly between 1030 and 1230 hours. A T-test was performed on the data and it was found that the difference was statistically significant. Our study shows that the temperature inside a vehicle in the sun can be very high even when the ambient temperature is moderate.