All right, so it’s not quite summer by the calender, but dammit, it’s Florida, and it’s already up to the 90s here.
That said, I cannot tell you how goddamned sick and tired I am of hearing stories like this. It seems like every summer children die because people are too stupid to remember to take them out of the car.
But but…it was an accident…I forgot…I was only gone a few minutes. Save it. I’ve heard them all. Yes, I believe it was an accident. But a child is still dead. We know enough not to leave pets in a hot car. Why can’t we take the same precaution with our children?
There is no excuse for this. Please, make this poor baby be the first and last death by hot car this summer.
If someone who’s good with electronics can figure out how to make this work, I’ll let you use my idea.
Just like when your car beeps when you leave the keys in the ignition, there should be a sensor that beeps if any seat belts are still connected when the car is off. That way, you’ll hear a beep if a car seat is still strapped in. It may not solve all the problems, but the forgetfulness thing will be greatly reduced. Lives could be saved.
Kalhoun, I don’t know if that would work. The car seat stays strapped in, but you unbuckle the child from the seat. Parents might learn to ignore the seatbelt beep because of the car seat. Maybe you could connect it instead to the buckle on the car seat?
A tiny excerpt from the article, but enough to make me literally sick to my stomach.
Over the course of an hour, the kid slowly baked to death.
Baldwin, the answer to your question is to punish the fuckwads who do this. “Accident” or no, a child is dead, and it was their fucking responsbility to keep that child alive and well. I hope that this “child care provider” (HA!) is canned, and I wish there was a way she could be prosecuted for a criminal act… if anything is criminal, this is.
Why aren’t car manufacturers required to install motion detectors that automatically roll down the windows when they detect something moving inside the car while it’s parked?
Avalonian, I hardly think that punishing people who killed a child would be an effective deterrent. If some dumbass is thinking of leaving the kid in the car, then “Hmmm, Junior might die,” should be enough of a deterrent. If they’re the kind of person who would go on to think, “Oh, but if Junior dies, I might go to jail!!!” and that’s what stops them from leaving the kid in a dangerous situation, then there is something seriously fucked up about them.
On the other hand, punishing people who leave their kids in the car even when the kids aren’t harmed might serve as a deterrent. “I’m sure Junior will be okay, but then again, if some cop comes along and sees the kid alone in the car, I might get a ticket,” is a thought process I can live with.
I’m not saying this is a good idea, just that it might deter people more effectively.
In Texas, these tragedies happen every summer, without fail. We had one a couple of weeks ago - day care center workers forgot to take a child of the center’s van after coming back from a field trip. They’ve been arrested and charged with child endangerment.
Most of the idiots leaving the children in the cars are, believe it or not, the freaking parents! Why the hell would you bring a child into this world, only to kill them in this horrible manner?? Humanity sucks. It’s pathetic that we have to ponder about installing safety devices - parents should know where their children are!
These people are horrible human beings, an alarm or safety device isn’t going to help matters. I’ve NEVER even come close to “forgetting” my child in the car.
But it’s not only the people who forget that the child is in the car. It’s the people who think “If I just run in the store for a couple of things, she’ll be okay” and it ends up taking a half hour.
A lot of people don’t realize that it takes just a few minutes for a car to reach a very high temperature.
That’s sort of what I was trying to say, but you said it much better.
To be honest, I think both measures should be in place. Leaving a child in your car, whether or not the child is harmed, should merit some form of deterrent punsihment. However, if the child is harmed, or dies, then the only way justice is served to me is if the person/people responsible for that child at the time is punished harshly.
The second part isn’t a great deterrent, you’re right. But it is justice.
I’m sorry but I see this kind of thing on par with parents (or whoever) forgetting their kids in the tub and the kid drowns (Happened in Toronto a little while ago and the parent was charged).
I can understand forgetting your books or something in the car but a kid? No, sorry, that just doesn’t jive with me.
Anyone leaving their kid or dog in the car should be punished to the full extent of the law. I’ve called the police over a dog, I’m sure I’d just go a head and smash the window if I saw a kid in there.
The apologist “It was just an accident” attitude presented in the article seems to suggest that the person thought that was an acceptable excuse, and I was mostly responding to that.
Doing a little research, it looks like charges of involuntary manslaughter and child abuse (everywhere other than Georgia, which doesn’t have a specific child endangerment law) are pretty standard if the child dies. However, if the child lives, charges become questionable. Really, there should be no question about it… that’s child abuse, whether it was an accident or not, even if the kid lives.
By the way, that last article… the kid was left in a car in Phoenix (!), in June (!!). Mom’s lucky she didn’t return to find him boiled.
So, what I said was misstated. I was disgusted at the time. Now I’m still disgusted, but better-informed.
I don’t buy the “forgetting” excuse. I’ve never once ever forgotten that my kid was in the car, and I have never taken a single fucking step away from the car without her. These people are just lazy and irresponsible. It’s too fucking much trouble for them to unbuckle a carseat and carry their child inside with them. They come up with this “I forgot” bullsit after the fact to try to cover their ass.
I think it should be a felony to leave a young child alone in a car for any length of time. Anyone who sees a child alone in a car should be encouraged to smash the fucking window, rescue the child and call the police. I don’t care if the kid’s been in there for thirty seconds. Let’s start shaming some parents. Let them walk back to their car and see a police officer waiting with handcuffs.
If a child dies, or is seriously injured, I think we need to put that parent in a hot cell somewhere and then “forget” all about them for about 50 years.
I thought about that, too. I think part of it has to do with the increased fear of kids being snatched. I don’t know if she ever did it when I was an infant but my mom used to leave me alone in the car while she did the grocery shopping. A big difference is that the windows opened manually and I wasn’t strapped into a car seat, or even with a seatbelt. We never used those things.
I, 30 or so years later will not buy gas a station where I can’t “Pay at the Pump” if my son is in the car. I won’t even leave him in the car while I walk to the drop box to return videos.
Now back to the OP topic. What I can’t understand is how it’s possible that any of the people who we will hear about on the news this summer didn’t hear about the same sort of horrible accident last summer or any of the previous ones?
That it was someone paid to take care of the child sent my mind reeling. I imagine that telling the parent who came to pick that poor kid up at the end of the day what happened would be as much punishment as any court could dish out.
Almost on target – call the police first, and let them smash the fucking window. (The reasons why are left as an exercise for the interested student.)
It’s incidents like this that make me think we should bring back the stocks. If you’re going to shame somebody for doing something that stupid, go all out and put them on public display outside City Hall all day. Preferably during tourist season.