Southern school praised for taking steps to prevent fatal traps in vans

Boriboon Witaya School, which runs kindergarten and primary school classes, came in for praise after the Drama Addict Facebook page shared photos of the school’s vans and measures undertaken to prevent possible tragic death.

Drama Addict, which is a popular page on social issues, shared the school's post on Wednesday, a day after a 7-year-old second grader of a school in Chonburi’s Phan Thong district was found dead after she was left inside a school van.

The driver, who is also a teacher, found the girl lifeless at 4pm when he was about to get ready to drive students back home after class.

He had forgotten to check the interior of his van after transporting students to school in the morning and had locked it, police said. The girl died of suffocation from heat and a lack of oxygen.

In the post, Boriboon Witaya School showed photos of its school vans parked in a row with their back and side doors left open as part of the measures to keep students from being locked or trapped inside.

The school said the teacher assigned to each van would check each student’s name from a list as they get in and out.

The driver then makes it a point to check the interior of his van before cleaning it. The vehicle’s doors are always left open when parked just in case a student is accidentally left inside, the school added.

As of Thursday afternoon, the post garnered more than 29,000 likes and over 10,000 comments and was shared over 12,000 times.

“Good, simple and correct,” one netizen commented.

“Lovely, this will give parents peace of mind. This method is the best,” another commented.

“That’s right. Why should the doors of school vans be locked when the vehicles are parked inside a school?” yet another commented.

According to Channel 3, there were 129 reported incidents of school children being left inside vehicles from 2014 to 2020. Six were killed from 2016 to 2020. Here are five incidents:

- May 11, 2016: a three-year-old girl was left inside a van on the way to a nursery in Samut Prakan. The van had a malfunctioning air-conditioner and students were relocated to another vehicle, but the three-year-old victim was unfortunately forgotten inside the van.

- July 31, 2017: a 6-year-old first grader of a school in Ayutthaya was found left in a pickup truck that was modified to transport children. The kid was trapped inside a space behind the driver. He died three days later.

- August 15, 2018: a van driver left a 3-year-old girl inside his vehicle after driving children to a school in Pattani’s Sai Buri district.

- June 18, 2018: a five-year-old girl was trapped inside the space behind the driver’s seat of a pickup truck used to transport students. The teacher forgot she was inside after helping other kids leave the vehicle at a nursery in Khon Kaen.

- August 11, 2020: a 2-year-old boy was left inside a school van belonging to a nursery in Nakhon Si Thammarat. The van was left parked under the sun from 7.30am to 1.30pm. The boy died four days later.