Leaving baby in car to get car park ticket

[IstheCartooFar]

Name changed as chatted to husband and friend about this already...

I've tried to include all relevant details to avoid drip feeding etc...

Woman in car park annoyed me yesterday. I'd left baby in car to walk to ticket machine (at the end of the aisle next to mine, no closer spaces available). When I came back woman had parked next to me and getting her own children out.

She said 'excuse me, have you just left your baby in the car all on its own?' in an accusing way.

I replied I was just at the ticket machine, which she humphed at and turned away.

I felt pretty cross at her implication I'd done some awful dangerous parenting so I said I found her tone very judgemental.

She just said well you hear horror stories (and then said some confusing story about how some people have brain injuries and do weird things so you have to check). I just said you have to make lots of risk assessments as a parent of leaving baby in car vs lugging them through busy car park, she turned away and didn't answer.

Anyway, do people leave baby in car to get a ticket or is that just me being lazy??

And was she unreasonable to check or would you do the same? (to me it was pretty obvious I'd just gone to get a ticket rather than done a full shop, considering I'd walked past her car with ticket, put it on windscreen then was getting baby out).

Yes I leave my baby and 8 year old in the car while I get a ticket, pay for petrol, get a trolley, take my shopping into the house.

I think it's absolutely fine, I'm not even going to try to justify it by saying it's safer I just find it easier.

There was an incident with my sister many years ago where she left her ds in a car with her friends two children, they were aged between 3 and 6 she was taking them out for the day. She was standing by the car at the front door speaking the the friend saying bye etc, when the car started rolling down the hill. One of the dc had managed to take the handbrake off.

That's not likely to happen with a baby strapped into a car seat though.

duck Life is too risky.

What are we all doing here on this thread? We left our children unwatched for more than 1/2 a second.

for shaaaaame.

I suppose the fire risk depends greatly on whether you drive a Vauxhall Zafira...

i'vegotyourgoat - my childhood was peppered with stories of children letting handbrakes off when they were playing in a car and they invariably zoomed down a hill and hit a neighbors wall but everyone was always ok

In an enclosed car park (at least in my area) all the horror stories have been about babies/kids taken out of the car while the parent paid and run over/pram hit/car seat hit by drivers.

There were 2 cases, one awfully killed the child, in Wembley Asda for example. Careless driver looking for a space made a error and swooped in cruching their buggy/car seat with their 4x4. I shake in horror just thinking...

I don't know if nationally that's the bigger risk but it's happened twice.

My child/buggy in car parks exists only for me to HOLD. She comes out, goes into the car and is strapped in, then I fold down the buggy etc. No loose child, no child in buggy without my hands on said buggy.

Therefore unless it's blazing hot weather I leave my child strapped in the car and get the ticket.

I generally park within sight of a parking machine and leave my DC in the car while I pay for a ticket. I consider this to be safer than dragging a pair of bouncy small children backwards and forwards through a car park.

I think that some people are being overly alarmist about the dangers of leaving DC in cars while overlooking the dangers to DC of spending longer walking around car parks than necessary. I can certainly think of plenty of times I've seen pedestrians - not all small children either - wander straight into the path of a moving car in car parks.

And also... the advice when you break down is too get out of your car

This is an entirely different situation to being parked in a marked parking bay in a car park. A typical broken down car will be on a road / hard shoulder, where an inattentive driver could easily ram into the back of it at anything up to 70mph, depending on the speed limit. I know of several cases where family / friends of friends have been killed or seriously injured in this kind of scenario.
A car properly parked in a car park is much less likely to be driven into at speed by a driver not paying enough attention - the parked car isn't partially blocking the "road" used by the moving cars, for starters. It's ridiculous to claim that the risks to people inside the car are comparable in these 2, very different, scenarios.

Even if you have a faulty Zafira.
You have to still do the sums.

Chances of yours being one of the few 100 out of the few 100,000?

[[http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/vauxhall/zafira/93176/vauxhall-zafira-fires-all-zafira-b-models-recalled-again So, as an example]] London firebrigade had 71 fires in 4 years. SO, we can safely say 18 a year. out of the 234,938. Let's push it all up to be dramtic and say 150 Zafira's a year in the whole UK.

150 a year out of 235,000 cars. So let's say in 10 years. 1500 have caught firs.

so chances of your Zafira catching fire are: 1500 in 235,000 or 15 in 2350, or 1.5 in 235.

0.0006% of having a fireball Zafira.

LEt's presume for the sake of fun, that all those fireballs were parked in a car park at the time of them catching fire.
And let's say that 50% of the time they had someone in them? No, sod it;s let's say 100%.

So, that means the chances of your baby being caught in a fire in a Zafira, in a car park, with you not being in the car, and unable to do anything about it is less 0.0006%.

Sorry. But the risk is minimal.

Parkmobile anyone?

Best thing I've read all day people be crazy.

My mum regularly left me in the car because I was asleep, forgot me at a shop and walked home with the dog and oh yeah she ran over my foot in a car park. That would suggest my mum was actively trying to get rid of me and yet I survived to adulthood.

There is a 100% chance that at some point your going to die, and worry about the smallest of risks isn't going to change that.

My dd is 10yo now so she gets the car park ticket for me but I always got the ticket and then came back and got her out when she was a baby. It honestly wouldn't have occurred to me to not do that. If there was an issue with the ticket machine which meant walking miles to get a ticket from somewhere else then I would have taken her with me I suppose.

Mind you I am the kind of neglectful mother that also left her in the car when paying for petrol

I think that some people are being overly alarmist about the dangers of leaving DC in cars while overlooking the dangers to DC of spending longer walking around car parks than necessary.

YY. My ante-natal class talked a lot about how people misjudge risk (they were trying to convince us not to over-wrap-up babies or give them solids too early), so a 1/2000 chance of SIDS in the car vs the 1/500 chance of being run over and suffering a broken limb if in a car park (NB massively guesstimated probabilities - just trying to illustrate the point) people will 'see' the dramatic always killer risk but forget the greater less nightmarish risk.

Except my risk views are currently skewed by the awful story I relayed above so who am I to talk...

YANBU. I always did that. It's much quicker and easier and the likelihood of anything happening in the minute or so you are away from the car getting your ticket is infinitesimal.

I don't think carjacking is very likely either. The carjacker would have been held up in the queue to leave the car park. You'd have to be a very stupid carjacker to do that.

LadyV90 I'm amazed you are here to tell the tale!!!

Ummm 00100001, I think you need to look at your numbers again... Would be 0.6% on those numbers.

Just to try and be slightly more accurate:

• I'll take your 1.5 in 235 over a 10 year period, and that the car has the same chance of igniting at any point it is being driven.
• Assume average car driven 10,000 miles per year at a speed of 30mph. This equates to 333hrs/year driving.
• Say you park once a week in a car park and leave baby alone for 5 minutes. This is 4.3hrs/year baby is in car.
• So chance of baby being alone in car at same time as fire starting = (1.5/235)x(4.3/333)x100% = 0.008% over a ten year period.

Obviously these are very rough numbers, and reality is probably much less risky than that.

OK. Numbers are bad.

risk is still minimal!
:)

And I was making a joke about the Zafira...

But I hope you had fun working out your (faulty) stats. I love a good stat.

"H & s Common sense" bwahahaha I'm sorry but that is the absolute last thing in your posts.....

Binary numbers 0 and 1 are good though

Of course you don't leave a baby out of your sight for a second, let alone a minute in a car, am I missing something

Yes. Logic, reasoning, any concept of relative risk....just for starters.

Do people really think its necessary to have eyes on their baby at all times? Do they take them to the toilet with them? Do they sit and stare at them while they nap? Do they only look at things in the supermarket that are in their eyeline while they stare at their child?

IT be exhausting to be so vigilant against infintisamal risks!

Is all this talk of never taking your eyes off a baby for even a second reminding anyone else of the weeping angels from Doctor Who?

nicky :)

Oh lady wasn't waiting for me watching baby. She only noticed baby when I opened his door to get him out.

I agree with some what up thread re. It's not just about the risk of x vs y. You also have to think about the effort required as well and whether the risk (likelihood times severity) warrants such an effort. Businesses do these assessments all the time otherwise they would all go out of business trying to minimise minuscule risks.

(Obviously the assessments we make as parents are mental, quick and dont do it on a spreadsheet).

Anyone listened to the 'freakonomics' episode about risk? All about how hitchhiking deaths are absolutely statistically tiny, but fear/horror films etc make it seem a huge threat vs other way more risky things.

Would not have dreamed of leaving my girls in the car, however would not have dreamed on passing comment either on someone who had. YANBU

We frequently leave DD in car seat when getting out of the carbon the driveway to unlock the front door and bring the shopping in - otherwise she would be unsupervised either on the driveway or in the hous whilst we did one of these tasks.
So it's safer to leave her in the car for a minute or so.
It's not possible to watch a child every second.
I don't watch my child when i make a brew.
I don't watch them sleep
I don't watch them on the toilet/potty unless they need me.
It's tough but sometimes you have to just hope for the best.

isthecar you goose, I haven't got time to be listening Freakonomics. I have to watch my baby every moment, and it might distract me.