Too Hot for Spot and Tot! Rite Aid Posts Hot-Car Warning Signs After Talks With PETA

For Immediate Release:
August 31, 2023

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Following communications with PETA, locally based Rite Aid has pledged to create and install signs at its more than 2,100 stores nationwide alerting customers to the dangers of leaving animals and children in parked cars. In thanks, PETA is sending the compassionate company a box of delicious vegan, dog-shaped chocolates.

“Even ‘quick errands’ can end in tragedy, since temperatures inside parked cars can soar to triple digits within minutes,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “By answering PETA’s call for warning signs, Rite Aid is helping to prevent animals and children from enduring terrible deaths due to heatstroke.”

On a 75-degree day, the temperature inside a parked car can soar to 94 degrees in just 10 minutes, and on a 90-degree day, it can reach 109 degrees in just minutes. Already this year, 133 animals have reportedly died from heat-related causes, more than twice as many as last year. The actual figures are surely far higher, as these numbers include only incidents reported in the media.

Anyone who sees a dog or a child in a parked vehicle should take immediate action: Write down the color, make, model, and license plate number, and rush to have nearby stores page the owner of the car—and if the owner can’t be found, call the local humane authorities or the police. If they’re unresponsive, do whatever it takes to save the individual’s life. PETA offers an emergency window-breaking hammer for intervening in life-or-death situations.

Rite Aid joins a long list of companies—including Big Shopping Centers USA, Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, and Albertsons, which owns Safeway—that have posted hot-car warning signs.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.