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 always used to put my handbag on the back seat

Sorry @bumptybum- I wasn’t being serious- I was making a point. (I have indeed lost and forgotten things).

Sounds horrific, but I can't read the article as it's behind a paywall.

EDIT! I have looked at all your posts now @comoatoupeira and can see that you have posted again, with a link that is not behind a paywall. Thank you.

,

OP has posted a pdf copy later on in the thread.

Cross post. Thank you! I have noticed now and have edited my post. xx

And yet people with more knowledge on the subjects of psychology and neuroscience than you disagree with you. So 🤷🏻‍♀️

There is more than one comment from an expert.

Are you sure you read the whole article?

There are about 7 paragraphs from David Diamond, a professor of molecular physiology and a ‘memory expert’. I found his explanations very interesting.

There is also reference to psychologist James Reason and his “Swiss Cheese model”.

Along with Ed Hickling who you mentioned, is that enough experts for you? Do you think you know more about this phenomenon than these experts do?

Given how often this happens, I think if your ‘neurological problem’ theory had any weight, it would have been discovered by now.

For me, the theories offered by the experts quoted in the article have a lot more weight than your theory.

A baby died in a car in Ireland in 2017. Dad went off to work and tragically forget he had his little girl with him.

Sorry you're disappointed everyone isn't sticking the boot into the bereaved parents. You'll just have to get used to the fact everyone else isn't that nasty.

It's a really unpleasant read. The excuses, the overly descriptive flowery text, it's like a bad dissertation.

Yes I saw the 'memory expert' Diamond's opinion, he says though that ' while driving to the mall, that his infant granddaughter was asleep in the back of the car. He remembered only because his wife, sitting beside him, mentioned the baby. He understands what could have happened had he been alone with the child.' so clearly is a bit biased.

It's a really weird storytelling piece, no scientific evidence or stats just 'he said this and I think that'.

Parents may fleetingly forget a dc, start to exit a car and think whoops but to leave them 10hrs? Nope.

I of course do not want 'stick the boot into bereaved parents' as a pp has just suggested but this is not normal, could not happen to anyone and adults should be charged with neglect no matter how busy, distracted or whatever they were.

I think all new cars have child detection systems so theoretically in 15-29yrs this shouldn't happen again. My new car has it and I didn't know about it until I left ds in the car whilst I nipped to the nursery gate to get my youngest. The alarm was LOUD!

I used to give a friend a lift home from uni, I can't remember how often I set off towards my home and he would joke about being kidnapped because I drove past his place.

That was a 6ft bloke in the passenger seat who could speak to me.

We do stupid things all the time, fortunately things like calling your partner to ask if they have seen your phone don't end up in tragedy.

Someone made the point that people often don't walk past car parks, maybe car parks should have drones both for added security and to check for a small child.

So what do you think is happening? Are they doing it deliberately as a calculated risk because...? Or are they doing it hoping the child will die? Or what?! It makes no sense to me to think this is deliberate.

I can see how it happens, as it is easily to be distracted. My heart goes out to all concerned.

@Gloriia

It's a really unpleasant read.

Well yes, of course it is due to the subject matter.

Yes I saw the 'memory expert' Diamond's opinion

I thought the stuff about competing memory systems was interesting. There was quite a lot of detail there about different parts of the brain and their functions. I don’t think that is just Diamond’s opinion- it is borne out of research.

no scientific evidence or stats

There is plenty of mention of science in the article. Psychology is a science.

Parents may fleetingly forget a dc, start to exit a car and think whoops but to leave them 10hrs?

Here you’re just demonstrating that you did not understand much of what was explained in the article. The whole point is that the parent either thinks someone else has dropped the child off, or that they themselves have already done it. So there is no ‘whoops’ until much later in the day.

could not happen to anyone

It really could though. Did you see the range of occupations the parents had? The different backgrounds they had? Very different people. The one common factor is that they all had a human, fallible brain.

This does happen quite a lot. And as PP pointed out- probably happens a whole lot more than we know about because there must be numerous occasions where it has happened but the child didn’t come to harm because they didn’t overheat. If you think that ALL of those parents it has happened to have got a neurological issue then it’s on you to prove it.

DS had only just started school when DD was born. For the first term we could take them into the classroom to take off their coats etc then leave. All the kids were fussing around newborn DD so I tucked her, in her car seat, into the corner of the classroom so I could sort DS. I then walked out of the classroom, through the school grounds and was nearly at my car before I realised I as missing something! In my case, I remembered quickly enough and she was having a lovely time being entertained by the class but it reminded me how easily you can become distracted, especially when you’re tired.

""Humans, Hickling said, have a fundamental need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at
random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible.”

Well actually it can, or we'd have lots more dead children, particularly under 5. It's a matter of care and attention. I see parents distracted constantly. It won't be liked, but particularly Dads, toddlers trailing behind, even crossing roads. Half the falls I see from swings etc, could be avoided, not be helicopter parenting, but just watching and directing/teaching. My youngest GC has hypermobility, they'd come back from Dad's injured. We had her the majority of the time, she didn't get injuries, through lack of care. There's accidents and then there's inadequate, age inappropriate care. I don't think some people are really bad at calculating risk, if they wasn't, the drowning and serious burns rates would be a lot less.
@Mt563 there's been cases in the US of parents having no childcare and keeping the child in the car, going out through the working day to give drinks/food etc. There's also cases of children left in cars so the parents can party. There's too many deaths in the US for them not to be aware of the dangers, so it must occasionally, be a calculated risk. I watch a lot of US police cars and there's a lot of reports from neighbours about children left in cars, to make life easier for the parents. .

It's not meant to be a research paper. It's a newspaper article, that's part reporting, part story-telling.

I think that, with your comments, you fall into the category of humans that Ed Hickling described as having a "need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible". You lack, willfully or out of necessity or otherwise, the ability to accept that such tragedies do happen in entirely random fact patterns by imperfect humans - which is all of us, including you. Denying it could happen to you won't push you further down the list of people it could happen to. All it takes is a second of inattention, something every living person is guilty of all the time, because we're not perfect.

And is that really such a reach? All of us on this thread are calming typing away on our phones or laptops while wars are being waged, children are dying from hunger or preventable disease or abuse or malice? We know that people do terrible things to children deliberately and we do nothing about it. Why condemn this specific act of neglect? What positive consequence would come from it? Will it make the child come back? All it would do is make you feel justice has been served, in a base 'eye for an eye' way. The criminal justice system isn't based on that premise, on the basis of revenge (and thank heavens).

Dogs seem to be deliberately left though, when this happens. People underestimate how long they will take “just popping into Tesco”, or don’t realise how hot their car will get, or how quickly heat can overwhelm a dog.
With children the parent isn’t doing any of that, they think the child is somewhere else. They think their child is safe at Nursery, or at home with the other parent. The man in the article who remotely turned off his car motion alert as he could see from his window that there was nobody near his car, and at no point did it occur to him that his child was trapped inside, because in his mind, his child wasn’t in the car.

When we get out of our car, it beeps and comes up with a warning to check the back seats, even when there's absolutely nothing there.

It's quite annoying, but if it stops this from happening even once, I'll put up with it forever.

The one common factor is that they all had a human, fallible brain

No, the one common factor is that they are all focused entirely on themselves, and not paying anywhere near enough attention to their children.

If I have a child in the car, I’m chatting to them constantly. If they fall asleep, I’m checking on them regularly in the mirror and thinking about drop off and what I need to tell their key worker and whether I’ve applied sunscreen etc etc.

Thats what a normal parent does.

edit to add - I don’t doubt that these parents have had a genuine lapse of memory, I just believe that the lead-up to that lapse is a lack of proper, attentive parenting.

'I think that, with your comments, you fall into the category of humans that Ed Hickling described as having a "need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible". You lack, willfully or out of necessity or otherwise, the ability to accept that such tragedies do happen in entirely random fact patterns by imperfect humans ''

I fall into the category that if parents went out and left small children alone in the house and they tragically died in a housefire they'd still be charged with neglect and possibly manslaughter. Forgetting your kids are where you left them should not make anyone less responsible.

One is human error, the other is human choice.

Two totally different things.

Mine are teens now and I was thinking 'how would you forget?' but we walked our children to nursery.

The thing to remember is that it's thankfully very very rare. This is a case in Spain, reported in an American newspaper, being discussed on a UK website.

David Cameron left his child in a pub.

He thought she was with his wife. She thought she was with him.

Crucially... they believed the child was somewhere safe.