You encounter a person in a parked car who is not awake. What is your next step?

To clarify: when I say “existing” I don’t really mean “living in their cars” but staring into space, waiting, talking on the phone, etc.

That’s not a judgment against anyone living in their cars; it’s a hard time to be alive for most people.

The odds are that nothing is wrong. People take a break in their parked car all the time. If you feel you must do something, get a closer look. A person in genuine distress is likely to look it. Otherwise, I'd do nothing.

I've definitely napped in my car in the past and would have been annoyed if someone woke me up.

I only ever really take a second look inside of a parked car if I notice that a dog or a kid is in it. Is the a/c on or windows down? Then whatever. I waved down some mall cops once for a dog in a locked car on a 95-degree day. They called the actual cops, who broke in and rescued the dog!

I would definitely just assume that someone was taking a nap, unless there was an obvious indication that there was something wrong.

hold a mirror under their nose

I would just keep walking. I will stop and help someone who seems to be in distress on the sidewalk, but if they're in a car, somehow I feel like it's none of my business, like, hey, worst case scenario at least they've got a car.

I tend to mind my own business in situations like this but it’s complicated, especially after a friend went missing and was then found dead (natural causes) in his car ina a McDonalds parking lot. The one thing I would NOT do is call the cops.

If it's night, nothing - assume they are sleeping. Probably would check again in the morning. If it's daytime, take a closer look to see if there's regular breathing. If not, probably call paramedics.

I found someone passed out in rescue position in the bright hot sun on an asphalt parking lot in 2019. Irregular breathing, and didn't respond to questions. I did what I could to shade them and did call for help. Stayed until the first responders administered naxolone and got them loaded into the ambulance. It shook me up.

I've definitely napped in my car in the past and would have been annoyed if someone woke me up.

in addition, napping or not-napping, when alone in a parked car absolutely nothing is more freaky and scary than a stranger suddenly knocking on your window near your head.

I had this happen recently with an older guy unconscious in a parked car with the door open. I went back and gave the car a tap and grave him an “are you ok?” and got an angry grumble

But he was in a driveway so

I’ve had to take a ton of car naps, for various reasons, and felt an intense annoyance at anyone who hassled me about it. I’d simply (internally) raise a fist of sleepy solidarity and mind my own.

Probably go about my business unless there was some additional reason to be worried.

The last time I ran into a situation along these lines was a night last summer, around 11:00 pm, when I walked past an older person in an electric wheelchair who was unconscious on the side of a busy street. They seemed to be breathing regularly, but they weren’t responding when I tried to wake them and their wheelchair was all the way off the curb. I stopped someone else, and we decided to call paramedics.

I would probably take a closer look, but if someone was asleep or otherwise unconscious and there weren’t signs of distress, I’d leave them alone. We have people OD in parking lots around us all the time, sometimes with kids in the car, so that’s the most obvious thing I’d look for. But absent like vomit or blood or blue skin or kids, I’d just mind my business.

A couple afternoons after New Year's Day in January 2021, a driver passed out in front of a line of cars before a major intersection. After a couple minutes' frantic honking we drove around him: mouth wide enough to swallow his car, head thrown back on the seat. A cop pulled up at the same time I pulled away.

This guy may have been drunk or high, suffering from a sleep disorder, or god knows.

guess it depends on the circumstances

if it was at an interstate rest area, they're probably just napping

maybe get close enough to see if there's a sign they're in distress if they're somewhere you wouldn't expect someone to nap?

I almost always have to go to a parking lot and nap in my car after work now--I have two clients with anxiety-inducing voices, and having to deal with these is exhausting.

as someone who has napped in my car many times, I say leave them alone

I only ever really take a second look inside of a parked car if I notice that a dog or a kid is in it.

Once in a parking lot I encountered a police car in which a police dog had been left alone. It was after dark during autumn and the dog was barking at a rate and volume suggesting there was nothing wrong with its air supply. But briefly I wondered if it was all right to leave it alone. Or what would have happened if I had reported this to the police.

A high school classmate had narcolepsy. The drive from school to his house took 30 minutes minimum, so after school he'd pull over on a side street ~1 mile away and take a nap in his car. This was supposed to make the drive home safer. He always slept at the same spot along the same side street, which happened to be on the route back to my house. After I'd quit all after school activities, I'd see him sleeping there in his maroon car every school day and wonder what kind of safety guarantee this nap provided.

Something exemplary is going on with a car... pic.twitter.com/dE3wPcwJqJ

— Alan Wagner (@truewagner) March 24, 2022

We had a guy OD in a car across the street from where I was living in Indy back in '99. My roommate at the time was going for a run and I had to take some stuff to work early one Saturday morning and figured the guy was sleeping one off. I got back around 10-11 am we realized the guy was still there, we went and checked and he was dead.

The next door neighbors had quite a few friends that liked to stop by for 10-15 minutes and they had some big blow out parties quite a bit, so seeing the guy crashed in this nice big Toyota SUV was not unusual.

At least in my circles, someone showing up DOA OD'ed on pills or whatever was pretty freaking rare at that point. Drinking and driving themselves into a ditch sure or maybe some coke, but heroin or painkillers were just not usual stuff people got f'ed up to in the post college set of Broad Ripple of that era.

When I lived in Long Island I had a party at my place one night, I don't remember how wild but one of my friends who attended was exhausted and took a nap in my bed during the party. As he was asleep when he might have been drinking, he wasn't wasted at the end of the night (this guy's alcohol tolerance is heroic anyhow), but I tried everything short of physical force to get him to crash at my place. He *insisted* on driving the 20+ minutes home. I was pretty worried.

The next day, nobody could locate him. He wasn't answering his phone. One of our friends went over to his house to look for him, and he wasn't there. Lots of "Has anyone spoken to X today?" texts and phone calls were exchanged. Everyone was pretty alarmed.

After several hours of this, I walked to the library (like two blocks from my apartment) to return a book, and found him asleep in his car in the parking lot.

I def made some phone calls to worried friends but can't remember for the life of me if I woke him up or left him alone.

park my car next to theirs and fall asleep as well. solidarity

Be like Thom and ask "why are you doing that?"

seems to me it really depends on what temperature it is outside.

voted "do nothing", but would probably do something if it was a hot day and all the windows were closed.

In AK, people often get drunk and pass out in their cars at 30 below or so.

i knew a guy who left a party and decided to sleep it off in his parked car before driving home and got a dwi when the cops rolled up and saw he had the key in the ignition. (so he claimed, at least)

You don't even have to have the key in the ignition. If the key is IN the car, you can get charged.

I live near an embassy. Every so often I see cars parked on the street, with out-of-region license plates and people sleeping inside. I vaguely guess they have business that must be done in person at the chancery, and can't or won't pay for a hotel room. But I'm assuming that the Secret Service Police that monitor the area are looking out for embassy visitors that stay too long.

xp it depends on the jurisdiction, but if you’re legally intoxicated and have the car running because it’s freezing outside, you can get charged even if you’re asleep in the back seat :(

Voted 'knock gently on the window'.
This happened to me once. At the end of my street, an old fella in his car, I knocked on the window, I mouthed "are you ok?", he indicated yes, and I went on my way. A few months later, I got a new job and there was the old geezer in question! He was checking details in some dusty old ledgers and generally pottering about. Consulting with colleagues, I discovered he was officially retired and had been quite senior in the publishing company where we worked. They let him come in and tolerated him even though he wasn't actually doing any productive work as he was a widower and the only family he had was his son, who had some quite serious mental health problems and sonetimes got quite violent, and who lived in a council run facility in my street. The old guy would visit him on occasion and when things got too difficult would retreat to his car, kip there, and check in with his son in the morning.

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