Would you leave your baby/toddler in the car while you pay for petrol?

[Drummend01]

It’s middle of the day, the car is locked and you can clearly see it the whole time. There isn’t a pay at pump option. There’s hardly any queue so you know you’ll be less then 5 minutes. Would you leave your baby or toddler in the car while you go and pay?

The easiest way to judge this is by how often you see someone lumping a car seat into the shop with them to pay. I have been driving for 22 years and can't ever recall seeing this happen.

Always. So much safer locked in a car within sight of a parent than carried across a forecourt with moving traffic and flammable liquids.....
For those that unaccountably worry about the car spontaneously bursting into flames, you do realise your presence in the car would not make that unlikely eventuality any safer for your child, right?

My grandparents despise the fact I leave my children in the car to run in to pay for fuel. They always ask me “but what if someone takes them?” “What if you lock the car and then you can’t unlock it again and they’re stuck?” “What if the car rolls away”

My answer always the same: We’ll cross that bridge if/when it comes to it. But I’m not lugging two kids in to spend 45 seconds tapping my card to pay for fuel.

If I wouldn't leave my purse, I wouldn't leave my baby.

I used to when dd was little. I could see her all the time.

Its pretty much a daily thread, I almost wonder if it's a bot that keeps asking the same question in some kind of experimemt to generate the same responses every single time

No. I do not leave them in the car. I cannot see what’s happening inside the car and don’t feel comfortable leaving them alone.

Its illegal to do this where I live.

I wouldn't do it anyway.

I'd be furious if I was sat waiting for fuel and had to wait for some idiot to dangerously take the kids out of the car to take them across a busy forecourt.
Thankfully I have never ever seen this happen in 25yrs of driving so assume most people have some common sense.

Fuck, I hope I’m never stuck queuing behind any of these ludicrously panicky posters hauling their kids out into the forecourt, just to go and pay for fuel before spending an age strapping them all back in again… 🤦🏼‍♀️

Fortunately I’ve never seen it. Fuel and moving cars are much more dangerous so most people have the common sense to leave their kids in situ.

I was the unlucky person behind the parent who hauled their child inside to pay last week.

Really busy supermarket forecourt with plenty of pay at pumps. But no we had to wait ages for the child to be unstrapped, carried/dodged around cars, the strapped back in again.

When my DC were small there was no pay at pump. I never got them out of the car.

@Travelfan2021 I’m not a bot, I was simply asking a question which I haven’t seen asked before as I don’t live on MN. I apologise if it’s been asked a million times and you’re sick of it but there’s plenty of other threads you could be on, just don’t bother answering if it’s that annoying.

It's not been asked a million times.

It's far closer to two million!