I honestly would suggest that the people in this thread who haven’t done so read the previously linked piece, it is a very well written and moving article.
It absolutely can not happen to me. There is no chance at all that I will forget my daughter is in the car with me. You people can lie to yourselves all you want to make yourselves feel better.
Ahhhh…I see where Dio is planting his “I was right flag”.
Lets assume EVERY state has a strict liability law(no excuses whatsoever) for leaving a child unattended even if its for 2 seconds and nothing happens to the kid. And its a thousand dollar fine.
Then there is a case where a child actually dies. The legal system doesnt punish them AT ALL for the death. But, they are still on the hook for the thousand dollars.
Then, Dio, can claim “see I told you it was illegal!”
And it would be fine if Dio would lay it out that way from the start. And most people would probably go NO SHIT Sherlock. We don’t care about that, we care how the legal system looks at the death part.
But, no, he has to jump into a case where a person’s child died. Proclaiming its illegal and these folks are murders/killers, forgetting is never an excuse, and a good parent just COULD NOT EVER DO IT (with some other obfuscating, illogical, contradictory and just plain crap crap thrown in for good measure). Well, given that tact, it sure as shit looks like Dio is claiming that the legal system is holding the parents responsible for the death of the child. Dio personally sure as hell is.
Then all the experts chime in and people with cites and what actually happens in the real world show that these parents are often NOT considered murders, anybody can forget anything, and forgetting is often a perfectly valid excuse.
Then, Dio falls back on “but they still got a ticket!” because thats the way the law works He is right!
So, Dio has derailed yet another thread with his over the top bullshit, with one technically correct and totally uninteresting point, because he can’t fucking articulate it well from the get go, mixes in his personal feelings and HIS definitions of words, and apparently can’t tell what aspect of the debate people actually give a shit about.
If you accidentaly kill your kid or someone else will you promise to come back and tell us about it?
One other thing, just because I can’t let go of the analogy with experts and checklists…
The most dangerous “experts” out there are those who think that they are so perfect that they don’t need checklists and procedures, whether we’re talking about surgeons, pilots, nuclear power plant operators–or automobile drivers.
I used to supervise the operation of a submarine and its nuclear power plant back when I was in the Navy. In my experience, the most dangerous sailors I knew were those who were positive that they could never make mistakes, and didn’t use the mandatory checklists and procedures.
Naval Reactors (who administers the annual Operation Reactor Safety Exam) knows this, too. In a simulated casualty drill, operators are expected to perform their immediate actions from memory. The next step is to pull out the procedure, even if one has done the procedure a thousand times. Failure to pull out the procedure is grounds for immediate failure of that drill, even if all of the actions performed are done correctly.
Anyway, Dio’s insistence that he could never forget a child in the back seat reminds me of those sailors who insisted that they could never forget a step in a procedure. Until they did. :rolleyes: Fortunately, the U.S. Navy has sufficient back-ups and fail-safes that nothing catastrophic ever happened.
Out of curiosity, what do you imagine other people are trying to “make themselves feel better” about?
I’ll post here before the funeral. Don’t hold your breath though. I’m not an irresponsible moron.
It sure is. It isn’t proof of anything other than the fact that this happens a very few times each year and that it is sad when it does. just because the author believes the risk is equal across the population doesn’t make it so. Don’t you know people who you would say are more or less forgetful than others?
Well, it’s nowhere near the level of forgetting one’s child is in the car, but I have this same attitude about a task I have at work. I’m absolutely, supremely, 100% confident that I will not make a mistake on this task. If I don’t do it correctly, I have a couple of managers that will find it and get pissed off, so I take pride in making sure that I do it correctly and never screw up.
So you can certainly imagine the chagrin I felt last time my boss brought it up, I insisted flat-out that I hadn’t screwed up, and she proceeded to give me direct examples of mistakes I made.
What did I say that was factually wrong, dude, and what have I changed position on? I made one legal claim. I was right. Other people were wrong (and they DID deny that it was a per se crime to leave a kid in a car. It wasn’t a “no shit” situation). I think you’re reading a different thread than what’s actually here.
You know what? You’ve got me on that one. I used a phrase I probably shouldn’t have because I can’t explain exactly what I meant. I’d like to retract that part of my statement.
The fact remains, however, that there are too many people willing to make excuses for these awful parents out of the fear that “it could happen to anyone”.
I’ve gone to work without my belt. I’ve never gone to work without my pants.
This is exactly the opposite of how it makes me feel: it’s an appalling feeling that this could happen to me. On the contrary, I think you’re lying to yourself to make yourself feel better: surely it makes you feel better to say this could never happen to you than it’d make you feel to say it could.
And holy Jesus, that linked article is appallingly sad. I third or fourth or whatever the calls to read it, as hard a read as it is.
You say “making excuses for,” when I say “able to empathize with.” Emotional intelligence is usually not a bad thing. Seeing the plight other people are in, being able to understand how things happen… that’s a solution, not a problem. If we understand how “we” (or “anyone”) can neglect their child, we can develop safeguards, whether it is personally or socially.
Maybe you’ll never leave your kid in the car, but I guarantee you somebody will who said, just like you, that they’d never ever do it in a million years and were as inclined to vilify anyone who said otherwise.
It is intensely obvious when you don’t have pants on. Tactile sensations usually do that. Not having your belt, wallet, keys, or, and though it pains me to add it to the list, your child, is not as immediately obvious. Easy to keep track of if you’re alert, of course, but there can always be a slip.
I’m not saying that it’s forgivable or not. I’m just saying ‘it’s impossible to forget!’ ain’t so.
Not that you were aware of…
We just didn’t want to tell you. We were having too much fun.
This:
No, it isn’t.
Nope. I don’t have to lie to myself because I know it would never happen to me. If you’re honest with yourself, you probably know it can’t happen to you either.
Absolutely, one of the reasons that this article scares the hell out of me is that I forget things and am easily distractable, this makes me very careful of my actions when I am in a position of responsibility and if I ever have kids I will damn sure have a system in place to prevent this from occurring. I know many people who are less likely to forget things. I have met numerous people who would regard themselves as infallible and who forget things all the damn time
I have never met anyone who I would believe was incapable of forgetting things, and I’d consider anyone who refused to consider that they could a fool at best and dangerously negligent at worst
The majority of parents never make this mistake, the majority of times they do they will realise in time, and in the majority of those cases they will probably never admit to another soul what happened, just because something happens rarely doesn’t mean it should be dismissed especially when the consequences are so horrific.