Another baby has died in a hot car (Spain)

[comoatoupeira]

Another child has died in a horrific way after being accidentally left in a hot car.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/21/girl-dies-car-extreme-heat-spain

again, it was the father, distracted by work, who forgot to drop her off at nursery. I honesty don’t think this is a man/woman thing I think it is a work thing. In every one of this abominable stories it is someone being distracted by a work situation and they forget they haven’t dropped off the child. The article explains really well why it happens and how we need to make safeguards because we can’t rely on ourselves at all times.

distraction kills! Much more than malevolent intent.

AIBU to think that every single parent needs to read this article to realise it can happen to anyone and sometimes extreme stress and the power of habit can overcome us and cause the worst to happen
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html

BE WARNED it is the most upsetting piece of writing I have ever read.

My dad literally did this when my brother was a baby. My brother fell asleep in the back in his car seat and my dad drove to work instead of nursery on auto-pilot forgetting my brother was in the back. It's just EXTREMELY lucky that my brother work up when my dad parked up at work and my dad realised he was there. Otherwise he would have left him in the car as well. It's so easily done!

@Gloriia Your repeated use of the word ‘normal’ just doesn’t really work here. You think all of the parents that have done this are abnormal? In what way? Neurological problem?

You repeatedly imply that parents who have done this (or can see how it could happen to them) are abnormal and are shit parents. The evidence (the people this has happened to) just doesn’t bear that out.

Are you sure thats not just your car alarm?

I remember a few years back a Dads alarm was going off. Couldn't see anyone near the car, assumed the alarm had developed a fault he kept resetting it from his office window.
Yes he came out of work to find his LO dead in the backseat.
I think it was in the US

"Bad things cannot happen to me because I am different to those parents. I am especially careful and sensible.
If bad things happen to other people it's because they are bad parents."

the Madeline McCann effect

I took my son to meet a friend for the first time, he was very little, I hadn’t had a decent amount of sleep in weeks. He fell asleep in the friends living room in his pram, we were in the kitchen so we didn’t wake him. I had been home about twenty minutes before I realised I’d left him there when there wasn’t anything to put in the bath at bathtime.

Anyone can forget a baby, the people who think they wouldn’t are either deluded, or have a baby like our daughter who was completely incapable of being quiet.

Volvo did a key fob with a heartbeat sensor that told you if someone was still in the car. We can solve this with technology.

“Lucky enough”…. It’s about “luck” to not forget your baby on a steaming hot day? @CurdinHenry

So both you AND your friend forgot @Simonjt ? Both men?

Isn’t one of the features of having a fallible human brain that you’re not 100% on the ball all the time?

'Anyone can forget a baby, the people who think they wouldn’t are either deluded, or have a baby like our daughter who was completely incapable of being quiet'

I'm neither deluded nor had noisy kids.

Again, we may all forget things but not our dc and if we do and they tragically die then we should get charged with neglect and manslaughter.

None of this 'whoopsie we can all forget things!' minimising thanks.

I am a scatter brain and I have ADHD. I want to read that article so it's burnt into my brain.

How are you all reading the article behind the paywall? Do so many people have a subscription to the Washington post?

If they forgot the dc was in the house and they died? This new found 'forgetting' thing that seems to absolve parents of all responsibility according to some on here because Swiss cheese brains or some such twaddle.

She's posted it again, go on 'see all' on op's posts. It is not worth reading tbh. it's 20 pages of a journo writing an inappropriately and longwinded descriptive piece about the adults whose dc have died tragically with little scientific info other than they forgot.

Thank you.

I am stressed. I am distracted. I am sleep deprived and emotional. I am absent minded and forgetful on the best of days. I could be that parent.

Luck to never forget. The phenomenon of autopilot is well established.

As I said I am quite severely sleep deprived and I still have a long to do list for tonight so I'll try and be brief so I can do the one thing that might help reduce the risk of making careless fatal mistakes. Get some sleep.

It doesn't matter if they are charged with neglect and man slaughter. It wouldn't act as a deterrent as surely there are few consequences more severe than your child dying. Dying horribly. Because of something you did. Nothing really matters after the fact does it? It won't bring their babies back and it is highly unlikely to stop other babies from dying in this way.

. I don't think the point of the article is to minimise blame or to say it's ok that parents make fatal mistakes. I think it's to remind us that we are fallible and we all make mistakes and we need to be aware of that because otherwise why would you even try to avoid them

Maybe I'm biased because I know I forget stuff so I don't feel like this could never happen to me.

So yeah. I need sleep.

In Italy it’s a legal requirement to fit an “anti-abandonment” device to the car seat of all children under 4. You can get a car seat with it integrated or a standalone clip to add on and it sounds alarms/sends messages to emergency contacts if it senses a child is left alone in a car.

I believe they usually link to a parent’s phone so aren’t foolproof but there is technology out there to help prevent this and according to this article the technology is constantly improving: https://parents-together.org/car-seats-in-italy-now-require-alarms-to-detect-kids-left-alone/

Hopefully this is an area where advances in technology will be able to massively reduce the risks of these tragedies occurring.

I think it's notable that the most judgemental people on this topic are rarely the most thoughtful or cleverest in wider life. I bet they expect full compassion for their own manifold errors.

Again, it's not minimising it. We all know it's a terrible tragedy when this happens, what could be more horrific than a child dying a long drawn out death because of a parents mistake? It's trying to prevent it from happening, you can drone on all you like saying that it's clearly some kind of bad parenting but nothing points to that, you're being wilfully ignorant at this point.

I forgot my baby once. I feel sick even typing that. They were a few days old, fast asleep in the moses basket. I was getting their older siblings ready for nursery like I normally would, I got them dressed, put their shoes on and we went out to the car. We drive to nursery and we're almost there when I suddenly thought to myself "where's my baby". I spun the car round and dashed home where thankfully I found them still asleep in their moses basket. I was tired, I was on auto pilot and I fucked up. Thankfully there were no bad repurcussions but I beat myself up about it. I'm usually hyper aware, I have anxiety about my children being harmed so watch them like a hawk. That one day I just went about my morning without even thinking about it.

That Washington post article was heartbreaking. I cannot imagine living knowing my actions had caused my child to die such a horrible death.

This never gets any less harrowing to hear about. That poor family.

You can now get cars that will alert you to check for passengers in the back seat before exiting. A sticking plaster, but it's something

That should be mandatory with all car seats.

While we don't hear of children dying often this way in the UK, which is probably a saying grace of the weather, I'm sure their must be children who get found dehydrated but OKish after a horrible day in the car.

You’re actually being monstrously cruel here. Clearly, people DO forget. Really smart, responsible, organized, clever people who probably are too clever to waste their time posting to randoms on MN like YOU or me. People who love their kids dearly. What do you want to happen to these parents? That they go to prison? And then what? What about the other children left at home and the other parent? What preventative effect or rehabilitative effect will it have on the responsible parent? What long term repercussions? Why do you want to make a tragic an awful situation 100 times worse? You just want to punish for the sake of it. That’s beyond cruel. It’s nasty. You don’t love your children any more than these people do. I really, really hope that when misfortune happens to you the people in your life show more humanity than you are showing on this issue.

My car sends me notification if there is something heavy on any of the seats (even if I’ve left say shopping and gone in quickly to another shop). The other day my kid left his window open (I didn’t notice) and I got notification when we were 5 meters away.