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.

I think it must be horrendous trying to pick up the pieces.

I thought it was a harrowing but detailed and thoroughly researched article.

The author (with help from an assistant) has examined this emotive subject from multiple angles, interviewing (or occasionally just quoting) parents who’ve lost their children this way, one of their spouses, prosecutors, a defence barrister, jurors, a memory expert, two psychologists and the founder of a non-profit organisation lobbying for increased car safety for children.

He has listened to medical evidence relating to death by hyperthermia and a deeply distressing recording of a call made by a parent to the emergency services. He has examined a database of cases, and looked at products designed to prevent these incidences and the difficulties encountered by those trying to bring them to market or make them a standard feature in vehicles.

What more do you think he should have done?

Ah, so it’s that you’re a better parent than these other parents. That’s what it is. They are more interested in their jobs than in their children. You, unlike them, love nothing more than you love your children so when you are in sole charge of your children 100% of your attention is on them. They, on the other hand, love focusing on their work so much that they just don’t care where their children are, or whether they’re alive or dead frankly.

If a tragedy stuck a school, you’d crawl
over other children to get to yours, wouldn’t you?

I know this is an anonymous forum but are you not ashamed to have written what you wrote? Could you be more sanctimonious? More flawed? More WRONG? Did you read any of either of the articles written? Did you understand anything about what is going on when this sort of thing happens?

He interviewed parents who neglected <albeit apparently accidentally> but neglected their dc nevertheless with horrific consequences. Some alleged psychologist gave his half penneth worth. No stats. No scientific explanations just a load of anecdotal enabling so no, it wasn't a thoroughly researched article at all.

If you got a load of convicts in prison and asked them why they did what they did they'd have lots of excuses and explanations too but it doesn't change the fact they did what they did?!

Parents need to look after their kids, no ifs or buts.

These parents did not “forget” their child! That’s not the misfortune. Perhaps in your eagerness to condemn an unscientific article (that didn’t purport to be scientific, it’s from the WaPo fgs) you didn’t actually read it properly. They all thought they had done what they needed to do (drop off at daycare). They weren’t daydreaming, and they didn’t forget. They thought they had done the thing. The man who parked his car at work, and three times turned off his car alarm from his office window because he thought it was malfunctioning because he couldn’t see anyone near his car to trigger it: you think what? That he “forgot” to drop his child off and overrode the alarm through negligence? You don’t think that three times it didn’t occur to him that he hadn’t done what he thought he’d done, drop his baby off??

You are dangerously close to being that person in a glass house throwing stones.

By “misfortune” I was trying to be decent towards you. I still won’t change that word.

Your analogy to leaving the house without a child doesn’t hold so I didn’t address it last time. The mental process of driving is utterly mundane and happens while we sing along to music or talk to passengers or listen to a gripping podcast. Normally, leaving the house requires some thought. Anyone living a car-based life will spend much more time driving than they do leaving the house. It doesn’t hold, for me.

The ‘this could never happen to me’ people are ironically the kind of people who are more likely to have things like this happen because they will fail to change their habits or implement checks or a routine to prevent it from happening as they believe that it’s about good parenting and they are good parents.

For those of us who does recognise that it’s not about being a good parent or forgetting your child but an unfortunate quirk of brain processing that can happen, it’s more likely we will be conscious of changing our routine to avoid it happening to us.

Never think something like this can’t happen to you because you love your child too much or are such a good parent.

I’d like to think this wouldn’t happen to me but it’s feasible that it could, it could happen to any of us and we wouldn’t know about it till it did.

And I think people who get angry at the WaPo article probably do so as it’s a scary thing to realise that something like this can happen to good, normal parents. There was no suggestion they were poor or neglectful parents, they were parents like any of us, working, managing childcare and life. It’s terrifying to think that you can be a good, present parent but something like this can happen to you because of the way brains and routines work. It’s easier to believe that it’s only something neglectful parents do and that it could never be you.

I found both stats and scientific explanations in the article. But we’re just going to have to agree to disagree.

I don’t think that looking for explanations for these deaths is the same as enabling them. Effective prevention relies on understanding the causes.

Yes I am. I think I’m a better parent than anyone who manages to kill their child, accidentally or otherwise. Glad you understand that.

As for the rest of your post, wtf are you on about? Crawling over other people’s children? Have you been on the wine already?

The research has shown that in the majority of cases the child has been left due to a genuine lapse of memory, I don’t dispute that. What I’m saying is that the lapse of memory has been preceded by a degree of disengagement, bordering on neglect.

Wow. Accidentally or otherwise. I bet you judge SIDS parents and think they could have done more.

These parents did not kill their children, accidentally or otherwise. I’m not engaging with the rest of what you wrote because it’s not worth my time, you won’t or can’t understand the issue. But the above is an important distinction. They didn’t kill their children.

@ProfessionalPirate

the lapse of memory has been preceded by a degree of disengagement, bordering on neglect

You’re welcome to pontificate on how you think memory works but I’m much more inclined to believe the explanations offered by the actual experts quoted in the article rather than an anonymous person on the internet.

As for @Gloriia’s ‘We should not need beeping seats to remind us we are responsible for the safety of a dc’. Ok. So because you are superhuman enough to not ever have a memory failure like most of us earthly humans, no one should devise technology to help parents avoid this happening? A product that could prevent child deaths shouldn’t be invented or used because it’s better to just say ‘shame on you!’ and gloat over all the terrible parents when their child dies?

No, a truly good parent will be present, engaged AND take all possible precautions to prevent accidents. Me chatting away to my child on the nursery run and thinking about what I’m going to say to their key worker at drop off is me implementing a preventative strategy.

It’s like the bookcase example I used above. A parent might simply say to themselves ‘I will never let my children climb furniture and always keep a close eye on them’ but a really responsible parent will tether all large furniture in every room anyway. A good parent will be capable of making a risk assessment for any given situation.

I’ll never forget the WP article. I immediately started putting the baby bag that had my phone etc on the back seat because it can happen to anyone.

Can you point out where the ‘experts’ have been able to confirm that all the parents were fully focused on their children and the task of dropping them at nursery before then…forgetting to do so? They must have psychic powers and a crystal ball if they were able to do that.

Of course they did. Their actions led directly to their deaths. I’m not saying they murdered them, but the certainly did kill them. Please tell me what words you would use to describe it? Accidentally unalived them?

Oxford dictionary definition of the word kill - to cause the death of.

If you say so. But believing you are above this kind of mistake is dangerous.

I don't believe on a 30-min journey with a sleeping child you are thinking about what you're going to say to their keyworker the entire time, no matter how much you believe it yourself.

But there's no point in this discussion, you don't believe it could ever happen to you and have convinced yourself that because you are a 'present and engaged' parent that it can't. That's at odds with many of the reports of this happening to parents that would also describe themselves and be described by others as 'present and engaged'. So something is going wrong somewhere.

No of course I wouldn’t judge a SIDs parent unless it turned out they had taken a load of drugs fell asleep ontop of the baby, or some other reckless behaviour. Otherwise not a comparable situation.

I also think that the poor working conditions/lack of parental leave in places like the US are more likely to lead to these kind of things. Babies going to daycare at 6 weeks old, mothers back to work full-time weeks after giving birth, parents sleep deprived, stressed, very little holiday. It's a very different cultural environment to here.

David Diamond is a very emininent neuroscientist who specialises in memory and PTSD who has been researching this particular topic for 20 years, he is called to testify in court, he has published papers. I tend to put more store in his knowledge than someone on MN who says 'I woud never do that as I'm a good parent.'

'According to Safe Kids Worldwide, nearly 1 in 4 parents admit to having forgotten their child, age three or younger, was in the car.[14] According to Diamond, over 25% of parents with children under 3 have lost awareness of the child being present in the car at some point during a drive;[1]: 77 however many people believe they themselves could not forget a child in the car with them.[15][8]'

That's a lot of 'bad parents'. The cognitive dissonance of this being a common thing but no one ever actually admitting to it happening to them speaks volumes.

I make regular 2.5 hour trips with my children to visit family and we chat / engage / sing along to the radio constantly. Then when they fall asleep I’m checking on them in the mirror regularly. Is that so hard to believe? The time to think about work is after the children have been delivered into the care of the nursery staff.

Thankfully these tragedies are still very rare events. Vast majority of parents are managing to not leave their children in the car.

Having worked in the US myself, I totally agree with this.

Absolutely. When dishwashers were first introduced to homes the were several deaths from people putting knives pointed end up in the cutlery basket, it seems incredibly unlikely that you'd trip over and fall in your dishwasher, but people obviously do. Now we all know to lie knives flat, or put them pointed end down. These deaths are now rare.

We should all realise that, however unlikely, these things can happen to anyone, and make a conscious decision to think about simple ways to prevent it. Talking about it is so important because awareness is the key. A simple post like this literally could save a life.

Did you read the WaPo article? All of it?

I agree talking about it is important, and implementing strategies such as car alarms and putting bags on the back seat are all helpful. I also think talking about the accountability aspect of it is important too. If you know you or are partner are prone to letting you mind wander to work or other things while caring for your children, this is something that can be worked. We all know mornings can be hectic - maybe something like getting up half an hour earlier so things are less rushed, send those work emails and clear your head so you can focus properly on your children. This can also be a preventative strategy, alongside other methods.