Is it an offence to leave a baby in the car whislt paying for petrol?

[TheSleepFairy]

I have always deemed it much safer if my children stay in the car whilst I go & pay for petrol.

Today I have read on another forum that it is an offence & apparently a mother was approached by a social worker who took her details & arranged a home visit & advised her she would be "in serious trouble" if it happened again.

Would leaving my child in the car be viewed as abandonment &/or neglect on my behalf?

i parked outside a shop once,right outside,to collect something,the counter is right beside the window so i could see the kids at all times and was about 8 steps away from them,
just as i was locking the car a traffic warden came upto me and asked if i was going to leave my kids in the car,i said yes and showed him which shop i was going into,he told me if i left the car he would call the police as it is an offence to leave small children unsupervised for any length of time!

i however do leave my 3 strapped safely in the car whilst paying for petrol,or to nip into a shop where i can see them.

sazm- I would have called him on that tbh. Bet the police wouldn't even have come.

bastard !

so, is it legal then ?

It is definitively not illegal in the UK - it's not illegal per se to leave any child for any length of time, it goes on a reasonableness test - but it may not be legal in the US - some states have some completely inflexible laws on the subject, as some European visitors have discovered the hard way.

I know I have said this before in one of the many other threads on this subject, but what the hell.

It is about risk assessment, something which we are all very bad at. If we were serious about properly assessing risks to our children, we would never put them in a car in the first place as every year thousands of children are injured or killed in car accidents.

However, I don't know of ANY chld dying or being injured after being left 5-10 minutes strapped in a car seat while its parent dealt with paying for food/services.

Of course, if you leave a child for longer, in a hot car, with the windows closed that is a different issue. I remember a case in the States where (I think) British parents left a child in the car for about 20 mins while they went to a Chemists. They came back to find the police had broken into the car and they were arrested for child endangerment.

I think the Americans get a bit more het up about this, I would still find it a total waste of public funds to prosecute/investigate anyone who left a child in a car for a short time.

the traffic warden who spoke to me said that the day before, they had found a baby alone in a car,and it was there for 10mins before the parents came back,the traffic warden contacted the police and the lady was charges with some charge of abandonment!

i did argue that someone leaving a baby alone in the car to go and do their shopping was slightly different to me nipping into a shop a few steps away from the car,but he said they were coming down hard on people like this!!

I was once given grief by a traffic warden.

I was 9 months and 2 days pg. DS1 (2) was absolutely crashed out in the car. I had driven to Guildford to get a new push chair that I had already paid for.

I could not carry a sleeping boy and really did not want to wake him. So I took a view, that in the street next to Guildford High St mid morning mid week he would be ok for 5 mins while I picked up pushchair. It was December, it was not that warm. I paid the car ticket...ran (or waddled quickly) into shop. Grabbed pushchair. Was 4 mins.

Traffic Warden threatened me with all sorts. My view was, and remains, that I had not endangered my child. I acknowledged his views and left. I do not believe that I broke the law.

Doubtless others would disagree.

I don't disagree. It's all about the role of the state and busy bodies in other people's lives. We'll all disagree on some things. That's what makes life fun. Stuff like this doesn't harm anyone.

"child could take handbrake off (quite possible"

Yep, the then 4yr old did that to me, on my drive, which is on a steepish slope.
I had got out the drivers seat and was saying helo to a neighbour, in those few seconds he was out his seat looking thro the front seats, as I walked round to get him, the car started moving down the drive.

I had to run after it, to pull handbrake back on.
I tore all the ligaments/tendons in my foot and leg..