Child left in car in 35 degree heat

Just to say I don´t need to look at my car to lock it, just point control in general direction as walking away and it locks. My back passenger windows and rear window are black (good feature to keep Spain´s sun out) and I am tall, I would have to bend over at the waist to see inside car.

Sorry, had to laugh at this, metaphorically, because the case is too sad to laugh. No idea how childcare works in Uk, but generally in Spain we pay nurseries by direct debit at the beginning of the month. If our child doesn´t turn up, they don´t refund anything, our loss. You seriously think that a normal parent would leave a kid in a car in 35C heat for something like 8 hours, no food, no drink no nappy change. I dread to think what kind of people you know.

I do think it would be worth parents putting the car keys or bag in the back seat with the child.
Then you can't physically walk away without the kid..

I was born in the mid sixties, and when I was small my Mum was the only one I knew with a car. Most people on our road didn’t have a car at all, and my mother was the only one who could drive. My Dad walked to work, so sometimes Mum would drive us to school if the weather was very bad. Most of my friends also had fathers who walked to work. There has been this huge shift in my lifetime re cars, and when both parents have cars this tragic mistake must be even easier to make. As many pps have said, leaving a baby outside a shop in a pram was normal when I was little, and so it was fairly common that someone would forget and start the walk home. I did this with my dog, early 90s, left him tied up outside the shop and on autopilot left by the side door and walked home. Thankfully he was fine. Same happened to a friend.
I can absolutely imagine how easily this can happen. I have noticed that when DH is very tired he does go into autopilot, and he’s driven home a few times at night and left the dog in the car for an hour . Thankfully not in daytime in the Summer or in hot weather as we tend to avoid having her in the car at all then.
I feel it would be so easy to do, automatically driving to work, if you do that daily- not thinking about the baby and then suddenly remembering. I think this could happen to anyone unless they also had built a habit such as checking the car every single time, or leaving something essential next to the baby, or checking all doors. This thread could help someone get into that habit and perhaps avoid another tragedy.

🤣👏🏻👏🏻

Where have any of these reports said a parent has been on drug highs?

The vast majority seem to be normal everyday folk, out of routine going to work. I can't imagine many drug users are able to hold down jobs in the US any more than they can in the UK.

Most employers have random Drug and Alcohol test policies, random as in we suspect x is on something so we'll do a random test on x and 5 others to make it look random.

I've asked MN to add trigger warning to the article link. It certainly cured me from the 'omg I would never' attitude, but indeed it stays with you for years.

I’m afraid you are the one who still thinks this is about neglectful parents deliberately leaving theif children in cars - not the subject matter of the discussion at all.

I will leave it there - I have no wish to argue with a pigeon shitting all over the chess board thinking its ‘winning’

Of those 39 deaths 15-25 of them are due to genuinely forgetting.

Im sorry you feel that none of the lives or the incomprehensible human suffering caused, are worthy of science understanding how and why that happens and looking at solutions. Fortunately there are others who disagree with you - such as the NASA engineers who came up with a prototype when one of their colleagues lost their child after forgetting about them.

Those rear facing car seats also, you might not even see them, and if a baby is asleep and you are exhausted, it could happen to anyone.

That article in the Washington post I read it years ago and I will never get over it.

Don’t read it.

That was a harrowing read. Thanks for posting it.

This.

I think those that have malice for people who have caused an accident (a genuine accident), are not the model citizens they perceive themselves to be. I hope to god I don't happen to know anyone with such a lack of empathy and that they are not employed in any role which involves dealing/talking/helping with people with any significance.

I hope, they never have an accident themselves since they clearly believe they're immune to mistakes. But since they are robots incapable of mistakes, I need not worry.

Do you understand that tinted windows allow you to look out, but not in? Which means that unless you deliberately go and look over the seat, or open the back door, it is not always possible to see a car seat, particularly a rear facing one behind the driver's seat, let alone whether there is a child in it.

Something we have in common clearly.

It isn't even the story being discussed on the chat feed anyway.

Comprehension isn’t your thing is it?

Well data shows in US they have on average 39 deaths from children being left unattended in hot cars. And on average 300 non deaths. No doubt the u reported cases are a lot higher.

There are 63 million parents in the US. If they took 10 trips in the car with the kids a year that several hundred million trips.

So let’s over estimate and say 10,000 actual cases of abandoning the child in 630 million opportunities for neglecting them in the car. That still represents 0.001% of occurrences.

So this isn’t a major issue we need science to help us understand. Quite often the news articles provide enough information to understand the type of parent that did this (eg on a drug high etc).

So yes I’m the one with my head in the sand. Ignore the data and official reports and you and science have a blast understanding the complex behavioural issues, many of which are well documented and understood.

Not sure what you want to say here? The child was dead.

Its definitely a pyramid of risk thing, it must happen daily that people forget kids, and for every million kids who are accidently forgotten, remembered about at the last minute, they'll be that one in a million who actually comes to harm, gets found in a soiled nappy, and a bit dehydrated, and even less who are found too late.

I don't know which way you drive, but I usually face forwards, so I would not see the back seat when I exit the car, because it's behind me and eyes are up front. Even if I would decide to randomly spin around, baby would be in a rearfacing car seat, and if the baby seat would be behind driver's seat, the seatback would block the view. I have tinted windows. If your windows are not tinted and you have small children, it's quite likely the sunshade would be up in the summer. That's how.
If people are not specifically checking the back seat (and why would you, if in your head your child is safely somewhere else) it is very possible not to see.

I’ve never forgotten my children anywhere. Do I think that this could happen to me? Absolutely it could. It could happen to any of us, no matter how indignant you get about the idea or if you take it as some sort of judgement on your parenting or think you would never do that. The whole point is that it can and does happen to loving parents, that’s why it’s so scary. Those parents didn’t think it would ever happen to them either. They didn’t set out on their day aiming to be neglectful or to harm and kill their child. No doubt they set out like all of us do in the mornings, probably a bit harried and running late, mind on autopilot while we drive thinking about all the stuff we have to get done that day. Just one little change to routine and the brain is almost working against us.

Don’t think it can’t happen to you because it can, regardless of how good a parent you believe yourself to be.

The child would be dead if left for 6 hours in car in 35C

If relying on science to understand human behaviour and to try to find explanations and thus potential solutions to human problems them I’m more is hypocritical, then I stand guilt as charged.

Far better that than ignorantly sticking my head in the sand and claiming how perfectly perfect I am and decrying those who I see as less than me.

🤗

All these sanctimonious comments about this happening. That holier than thou, "it would never happen to me" attitude is exactly the sort of attitude that makes it more likely things like that would happen to you. Complacency.

The human brain gets into habits and routines. Personally, my daily routine means I never drive anywhere without my children in the car (I wfh), so on the odd occasion where I do drive somewhere without them, I feel really weird getting out of the car without them and am very conscious of them not being there. Someone who drives to work every day alone with no kids in the car, who then as a one-off has to take the baby to nursery before work might have the opposite response, especially if the baby falls asleep... THAT is when it happens. And if you think it couldn't ever happen to you without implementing special measures to prevent it, you're deluding yourself, and that is very dangerous.

My Gran had 6 kids, and every single one of them has at least one story of being left behind somewhere as a child. That includes my gran twice leaving the pram outside a shop with a new baby in it and not realising until she got home. It's not a new thing by any means, the main difference is that in the past, most families only had one car, so when babies and young children were taken anywhere during the day it was more often on foot rather than in a car.

What a long winded way of not saying sorry for jumping on a poster, and patronising them for your misinterpretation. You could have said sorry instead of going on a long narrative to justify not saying sorry. But I suppose that would've been too hard for you.