I don’t know. I still don’t see “forgetting” a kid because you’re “stressed”. Maybe it’s a priority thing. Where is the stress? Your job? Fire me, my kids are more important.
And “I was looking for a good job when I started working here”, to quote a philosophical genius I worked with years ago!
All kidding aside, I’d prefer to avoid a safety feature as annoying as auto seatbelts and as ignorable as car alarms.
I’m sure there are people who leave their kids in a hot car. There are people who do all sorts of things that I don’t understand. Some by accident, some on purpose. You can’t “engineer out” everything. Although trying to, in this case, is a noble venture…
I suppose motion sensors in the back seat won’t affect me very much, so I guess it’s not a big deal. I still don’t really buy the “I forgot” reasoning.
quote:I suppose motion sensors in the back seat won’t affect me very much, so I guess it’s not a big deal. I still don’t really buy the “I forgot” reasoning.
yeah but then all of us get to pay for it even if you are 65 years old and you know you will have a problem with it that will leave a bright red led lit on your dashboard when it malfunctions and cost a fortune to fix it . I wonder how many times these I forgot people are busy yapping or texting on the phone when they get out of the car ?
I know kids now date in groups but I’m still trying to picture sitting in the car watching the stars through the sun roof on a warm summer night. I mean my Morris and VW had bucket seats in the front as do most cars now. Maybe there would be an on/off switch or something. Unintended consequences raises its head.
This implies that the front seats were unoccupied however in a modern vehicle if the key is in the car so should the operator.
Ten or more years ago manufactures were considering the use of infrared sensors to detect occupants, they have been used with the A/C system to measure comfort since the 1990’s. I suspect they have not been too eager to shift responsibility/liability from the operator to the manufacture.
True, we will all pay for it. I suppose it’s worth it if it actually works and saves a kid or two. One day they’ll just wrap us all in indestructible, air conditioned, bubble wrap lined suits.
People who forget a child in their car won’t think to do this in the first place.
They say that because it sounds better than anything else they can say. Reason has nothing to do with it. We should license people before we allow them to have children.
We’re talking about children. 18% of American adults smoke; about a third eat themselves into morbid obesity. We don’t stop them.
And we can’t stop them from having children. Or neglecting them. Of course, kids can be taken away from parents if the children are deemed to be in danger due to the parents’ neglect. But that’s difficult to determine up front (pre-kid). I think “I forgot my kids were in the car and I left them in their until they needed medical attention” would probably quantify as the parents being dangerously neglectful, though, right?
Gee we already do. It’s called a Marriage License. Pay $10, blood tests required, can’t marry your sister, etc. I suppose some kind of a literacy test could be imposed but who would decide that?
Actually, you’re not accounting for the people who might forget their kids, without fatal results. I knew someone, a single parent outside her usual routine, who was once very tired and once she’d dropped one child off at one location, forgot the sleeping baby in the car. She got a block away before she remembered the baby was asleep. Now she takes a shoe off and puts it in the backseat, so when she steps outside the car, it’s a cue (if she even needs it — it’s been a year and she is still rattled by forgetting) to check the back seat.
Yup just goes to show how effective laws are at controlling behavior. When I was about ten I got a Smokey the Bear souvenir from Yellowstone. It said “I can bear it can you?” Even back then though I knew the difference between bear and bare which could be used in this situation.
Everyone who is judgmental or snarky because they think this can’t happen to them should see this. It’s opened my eyes to the issue. It’s not a matter of being a bad parent or a bad person, it’s a tragic mistake, and thinking it can’t happen to you is part of why it happens.
Good article. I didn’t finish it all yet. Nothing worse than losing a child, regardless of the method. I’ve also never been a fan of putting people in prison as punishment. To protect the public sure, but restitution makes more sense. But there just is no way a person can come to grips with having killed their child. Interesting to read the air bag as being a contributing factor. Unintended consequences again.
You think you understand everything and everyone. This will not happen to me because I know it can happen to people that allow themselves to be distracted. When my child is in my direct care, that is my first responsibility. I don’t take business or personal calls, I watch him in the backseat, I am focused on him. Not me, not my friends, not work- him. Yes, distraction is not specific to an income level, race or profession. That does not mean it can happen to anyone. Only those that allow distraction to affect their primary mission…
I think the sensors are a good idea and maybe there will be some after market device to serve the same function.
I remember when overhead garage doors where required to have the entry sensors to reverse the doors when tripped. I did not think that was necessary until I saw my neighbors kids playing push button a race the door game.
I don’t disagree. I still don’t think I’d let that happen either. Can’t imagine it. But it would be good to prevent it from happening to the kid of someone who did get distracted, since it apparently does happen. I’m not saying I’m a better person, etc., but it’s obvious just driving around that some people are more easily distracted from the task at hand, right?
I’ve noticed it with a guy at work. He will be doing something, then something else comes up that he needs to attend to. He’ll leave tools laying around where he was (in the way) and totally forget he was ever doing the first task after the second task is completed. Drives me nuts, honestly. So I guess people are wired differently.
