The line in the article about the little girl ripping out all her hair before she died will haunt me for a long time. I may have trouble sleeping tonight.
Come off it, dude. You know damn well no one here is suggesting that. This is all about if something accidental should be considered criminal. If your child darts out in front of your car and you hit and kill him, are you a murderer because if you REALLY loved your child, you’d have been paying attention? If your child gets abused by a baby sitter, are you to blame because you didn’t thoroughly vet the caregiver?
Our justice system contains checks and balances in recognition of the fact that criminal cases are often not black and white - not a simple matter to decide.
In one case, a parent may intentionally leave a child in a car to try and murder the child because they can’t stand taking care of it any longer.
In another case, a parent may do the same thing but it may be an accident. A parent who reaches for a policeman’s gun to try and take their own life would seem to be in the “accidental” category.
But that is one reason why we have judges as well as the legislature. They can be described as the “checks and balances”.
The legislators may write a statute explaining the letter of the law. But it may need a judge to sit in judgement of an individual case to decide whether the guilty parent should be sent to prison for a very long time or whether the parent can be given a more lenient sentence.
I don’t know what the answer is. But I’m very grateful for our justice system that recognizes the need for experienced judges to sit on these cases and make their decisions based on the facts of each case.
I know we don’t automatically throw every parent into the penitentiary because every case is not the same. Thank goodness for our justice system that recognizes the complexity of these cases.
That happened to a couple in my hometown. I had never seen anyone that carried the air of sadness like these two people. When they died decades later everybody seemed actually happy that they were relieved from their perpetual sadness.
how about those distance beeper things that they already sell? repackage it as love bands (together forever, always!) and even those old enough to walk won’t wander too far off without you knowing immediately.
of course, any gadget should be used as additional precaution on top of a parent’s natural paranoia and not as a replacement.
Someone upthread suggested these kinds of incidents only occur 2 or 3 times per year in the USA.
Given that is so very rare, I think it’s just impossible for anyone to predict it will never happen to them. You just can’t tell. Sad to say, it could happen to anyone. There is just no way to prevent it from happening to you.
It is good to take extra precautions. But given the extreme rarity, it can still happen to anyone.
The article says 15-25 times a year in the US. So, not an epidemic, but not as rare as that.
No one has argued that, and the linked article describes long court cases used to determine whether criminal negligence occurred. Those case would not occur if we all agreed that it was a ‘get out of jail free card’.
Do you genuinely believe that every single one of the parents in these articles wanted to kill their child, to be rid of it because it was too much trouble? Why then did some of them attempt to wrestle the gun from the police officer and commit suicide on the spot?
Oh god, THAT article again. I remember the original thread in which that article came up. Horrifying yet mesmerizing at the same time. I couldn’t stop reading it even though I didn’t want to contemplate those kids and their last moments. Especially difficult was the incident in the article where the kid torn out her hair before she died. Things like that make me glad I don’t have kids. If I do, I’d probably put the car seat in the front, damn regulations or not, I’d rather they have the possibility of being killed quickly than being cooked alive
With that said, Dio, I’m going to take a stance equally extreme as yours. I think it should be legal to put kids in cars for them to die in the sun. I think the possibility of that is extremely low, even lower than the accidental deaths. Therefore, I’m willing to give any parent the benefit of the doubt who have kids that die this way. I don’t want to prosecute because it wouldn’t teach them a lesson, they would be suffering more than anything the law could inflict on them. Until I believe otherwise, I’m unwilling to kick a person while they’re down. No justice comes from putting these parents in jail, they have suffered enough
I don’t understand how there could be a psychological explanation for something that only happens three dozen times a year. If it was really so common for people to operate on autopilot to the point that they can forget a baby in the car, we’d have a lot more dead babies.
Do you think it is more likely that a child will die from exposure as a result of being left in a car or that an adult will die as a result of being struck by lightning?
I have posted what I think is the answer in the following spoiler.
[spoiler]I find it fascinating how we all have wildly different interpretations of how common or rare an event is.
I would estimate that in the continental USA, about ten children die each year as a result of being left in a car and dying as a result of exposure. Is that number common? Or is it rare?
I found a link to the number of people struck by lightning each year in the USA. As far as I can tell, only about 4 people per year are killed as a result of being struck by lightning.
So, it seems to me the chances of a child dying as a result of being left in a car are farily close to those of an adult dying as a result of being struck by lightning.
But, I’m not sure I interpreted the following table correctly. Perhaps someone could take a look and let me know if I’m very far off base?
This is not a Puritan issue or a victimless crime. Are you arguing for just throwing out the whole concept of a criminal justice system and right and wrong? Because I don’t see how you get to making killing your child through negligence legal, and opposition to its illegality some sort of prudish crusade, unless you are an outright anarchist.