A horrified mother has shared a panicked warning with other parents, after she said her daughter's car seat caught fire due to the sun's reflection on a mirror.
Amanda Kenny DeAngelis, from Texas, took to Facebook last week to explain that she was in the process of taking her baby daughter Mila out of her car seat when she noticed smoke rising from the contraption.
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The mother said she has used mirrors along with car seats with all of her children and hasn't had any issues in the past.
She typically relies on the mirror to keep an eye on her little one while she is strapped in a rear-facing seat, which she wouldn't be able to do otherwise from the driver's seat.
Other parents have used the same system, and safety mirrors specifically designed for car seats are available on the market.
On this occasion, though, according to Amanda's account, the car seat started smoking, and the burn was serious enough to leave holes in the fabric.
'Thank God! I was rushing home and didn't sit in my seat checking emails and responding to texts like I typically do it Mila is sleeping,' the mother wrote.
'I've [used] car seats with mirrors with all my kids—never have I experienced this! Scary!'
In her video, she described: 'This is my baby's car seat, smoking because there is a mirror on the back of the seat so I can see her. I just took her out of the seat and smelled smoke and saw the smoke coming up. And this is caused by the sun's reflection into the car seat. Thank God I made a two-second stop and found this before something happened.'
The mother identified the car seat's brand as Britax, and the mirror as being from Eddie Bauer, and said she had notified both companies.
Her post has been shared almost 52,000 times and has received 10,000 reactions on Facebook, along with 13,000 comments.
Some fellow parents were prompt to blame 'science' for the incident, while others said the mirror wasn't properly installed.
'This post is stupid,' one person wrote, 'the only problem is the woman using the equipment improperly. You have to have enough common sense not to park where the sun can burn your baby.'
'I'm not sure who thought it was a good idea to put a mirror facing a car seat in the hot sun but common sense says not a good idea,' someone else added.
'Problem is easy to solve: place the mirror where it's supposed to be which is much higher so that you don't have to contort your rear-view mirror to even remotely try and see it,' another Facebook user chimed in. 'It's designed so that the rear-view mirror can be used normally and still see your child.'
Amanda later shared an update, writing: 'I'm not placing blame or trying to start arguments... just trying to make other informed this is a possibility."
'Never did it occur to me it would reflect and happen so quickly. Do with this information what you will—just don't judge!'