Mother Says Backseat Mirror Caused Vehicle To Catch on Fire, Warns Other Parents
If you were like many young children growing up with access to a variety of items, you may have spent some lazier summer afternoons puttering around and seeing what you could burn with a piece of glass.
Leaves, grass, hapless bugs: nothing was safe from the gaze of your magnifying lens.
Perhaps you were even one of the special few who decided to see how long you could stand the white-hot pinpoint yourself.
Regardless of whether you dabbled in glass-started fires or not, you’re probably aware that focusing sunlight through a lens can start a blaze — great in a survival situation, horrible when it’s an accident.
In recent years, warnings have been put out about the danger of leaving water bottles in your car.
Seems innocent on the surface, but the bottles have been known to act just like that magnifying lens, causing fires in vehicles when the sun hits them just right.
But water bottles aren’t the only potential danger. One mother is on Facebook warning others of another possible hazard: Backseat baby mirrors.
The mirrors are super handy for keeping an eye on your little one at all times, but if the light bounces just right it can cause a fire just like the water bottles can.
“NOTE TO PARENTS WITH BACKSEAT MIRRORS!!,” the mother, who goes by the handle Axle Fortyfour (she competes in roller derby), wrote on Facebook.
“I park in the same spot everyday today the sun happen to catch the mirrors in the back in the right spot to set my car on fire. I went out to put the kids in the car for school pick up and noticed smoke.”
At first she thought the air conditioning must be malfunctioning and causing some sort of “mist,” but she quickly realized that it was smoke — and where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
“I grabbed Luca out ran like Usain bolt and tossed Luca over the baby gate ran back out grabbed Kai toss him (lovingly) over the gate and grabbed all my derby gear (can’t let my new skates melt).”
The mom didn’t know what had started the fire, but the fire department came out and gave the car a once-over.
“The fire department got here quickly checked everything ruled out wiring and my heated seats the chief told me ‘I’ve never personally seen it but I’ve heard of it happening,'” she wrote. “And I was lucky I didn’t walk out to a full inferno had I not come out when I did.”
She now believes that it was the mirror that caused the burn, which she explained in the comments involved the “fibers of a part of the bottom of the seat that’s not leather.”
“My backseat got a impressive power washing it smells like burn butt,” she concluded. “It could have been worse.”
Other moms commented, saying they’d be keeping a close eye on their mirrors or taking them down when not in use.
While this seems like a one in a million occurrence, it’s always good to be aware of potential safety hazards — especially the ones we’d never suspect.
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