Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is it a Horrifying Mistake? Is It a Crime? (1 Viewer)

[BlackandGoldXLIV]

You have to punish the crime.

Otherwise all the Casey Anthony party people who want to be free of the burden of children, can just leave them in the car.

 

[Redfish]

Few years back we had a male ER nurse leave his child in the car seat. Wasn't his normal routine to take the kid to daycare so he went straight to the hospital to start his shift. Few hours later the child was found dead in the car.

 

[kcgirl]

Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is it a Horrif...

I'm on the fence about this situation, now that I know how easily things go wrong. One summer when I lived in Texas, we were on the road to NO to bring my mother our kids for the summer. My then 4 year old son was on the 3rd row of my SUV sleeping with my 23 year old brother. I pulled up at my other brother apt complex in Alexandria. I was on the phone with my mother and my siblings exited the car with the other kids and I assumed my brother took my son. As I was updating my mother on our whereabouts, I left went to the gas station and Popeyes not realizing my son wAs asleep in the car. When I went back to my brother house, I hugged everyone and then I started feeding the kids. I turned and asked my brother where was my son. He said he left him in the car with me and I wanted to faint. Thank God my son wasn't out there long. After going through that, it definitely made me more sympathetic to others who fall in this predicament.

 

[TheDeparted]

I really wish car seats had pressure plates that hooked into the cars' warning chime when opening the driver door. I researched this a few years ago and found patents filed for every permutation of the idea I could think of, yet almost no products exist to do this for one or more reasons, and children continue to die every summer.

Of course, nowadays there may be even more elegant solutions available.

I don't think parents should be charged with a crime unless it can be proven that this was done intentionally. Having such a system would help remove the ambiguity of intent/forgetfulness.


I mean - imagine if our cars would display the current speed limit of a road on the dash and chimed or otherwise displayed an alert when exceeding the speed limit by a certain amount. People who want to obey the speed limit should be able to avoid citations more reliably, and those who choose to speed and are caught speeding would not have any excuses. It would really simplify things.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Would prosecuting the parent really deter other parents from committing a similar tragic mistake?

I am glad the phenomenon is being publicized though. Does anyone know if there has been any "warning devices" developed? IDK, maybe car seats that have audible warnings if the weight of a child is present and the car's ignition is stopped.

The article talks about this. It's a marketing nightmare and who would buy it?

Nobody wants to admit that they could ever possibly forget their child in the car.

"Are you the type of parent who might one day leave your child in a sweltering car on a stiflingly hot summer day? If so, this is the product for you!"

No matter how they sugar coat it, that's the message these products would convey.

The only way around it is the make some sort of sensor mandatory in all child car seats.


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From same article:

For years, Fennell has been lobbying for a law requiring back-seat sensors in new cars, sensors that would sound an alarm if a child's weight remained in the seat after the ignition is turned off. Last year, she almost succeeded. The 2008 Cameron Gulbransen Kids' Transportation Safety Act -- which requires safety improvements in power windows and in rear visibility, and protections against a child accidentally setting a car in motion -- originally had a rear seat-sensor requirement, too. It never made the final bill; sponsors withdrew it, fearing they couldn't get it past a powerful auto manufacturers' lobby.

There are a few aftermarket products that alert a parent if a child remains in a car that has been turned off. These products are not huge sellers. They have likely run up against the same marketing problem that confronted three NASA engineers a few years ago.

In 2000, Chris Edwards, Terry Mack and Edward Modlin began to work on just such a product after one of their colleagues, Kevin Shelton, accidentally left his 9-month-old son to die in the parking lot of NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. The inventors patented a device with weight sensors and a keychain alarm. Based on aerospace technology, it was easy to use; it was relatively cheap, and it worked.

Janette Fennell had high hopes for this product: The dramatic narrative behind it, she felt, and the fact that it came from NASA, created a likelihood of widespread publicity and public acceptance.

That was five years ago. The device still isn't on the shelves. The inventors could not find a commercial partner willing to manufacture it. One big problem was liability. If you made it, you could face enormous lawsuits if it malfunctioned and a child died. But another big problem was psychological: Marketing studies suggested it wouldn't sell well.

The problem is this simple: People think this could never happen to them.
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[antipop]

the real question is do we want to pay for these thugs to rot in jail or do we just leave them in a hot car to suffer...then revive them at the last minute and do it again next week

 

[Optimus Prime]

Interesting how people react. "They have to be monsters" and it's that thinking that makes making and marketing warning devices so difficult.

the real question is do we want to pay for these thugs to rot in jail or do we just leave them in a hot car to suffer...then revive them at the last minute and do it again next week

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From the same article:

"This is a case of pure evil negligence of the worse kind . . . He deserves the death sentence."

"I wonder if this was his way of telling his wife that he didn't really want a kid."

"He was too busy chasing after real estate commissions. This shows how morally corrupt people in real estate-related professions are."

These were readers' online comments to The Washington Post news article of July 10, 2008, reporting the circumstances of the death of Miles Harrison's son. These comments were typical of many others, and they are typical of what happens again and again, year after year in community after community, when these cases arise. A substantial proportion of the public reacts not merely with anger, but with frothing vitriol.

Ed Hickling believes he knows why. Hickling is a clinical psychologist from Albany, N.Y., who has studied the effects of fatal auto accidents on the drivers who survive them. He says these people are often judged with disproportionate harshness by the public, even when it was clearly an accident, and even when it was indisputably not their fault.

Humans, Hickling said, have a fundamental need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible.

In hyperthermia cases, he believes, the parents are demonized for much the same reasons. "We are vulnerable, but we don't want to be reminded of that. We want to believe that the world is understandable and controllable and unthreatening, that if we follow the rules, we'll be okay. So, when this kind of thing happens to other people, we need to put them in a different category from us. We don't want to resemble them, and the fact that we might is too terrifying to deal with. So, they have to be monsters."

After Lyn Balfour's acquittal, this comment appeared on the Charlottesville News Web site:

"If she had too many things on her mind then she should have kept her legs closed and not had any kids. They should lock her in a car during a hot day and see what happens."
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I don't think that jail is the answer here. I think a lot of these parents would welcome jail.

being acquitted and having to face the above kind of comments, having to face your spouse, other children, having to go to work and face your coworkers.

I think that in a lot of ways that's much worse than sitting in a jail cell.

 

[BIG E]

To leave an infant in the car on purpose while you're doing something or because you are drunk is definitely a crime. To forget them in the car is hard call.
When my kids were infants my wife would always drop them off at the baby sitters. Once in a blue moon she had something to do and I would drop them off. On one occasion I pulled in my work parking lot with her in the backseat before I remembered she was in the backseat. That was a horrible feeling even though nothing happened. I can see how it happens and it's something that will haunt them the rest of their lives.

 

[McBushister]

This is a crime? No tragedy? Yes I feel horrible for these people that have to live with this guilt. There is no way that people who abort a child is not a crime and this should be a crime!!

 

[uproar90]

With The Boy, we experienced true sleep deprivation... for the first 6 months of his life, he had colic in the absolute worse way. There were days that I'd look around @ 11am-12pm, wondering how I got to my desk at work, not remembering the commute, or anything about the morning.

The one saving grace we had during that time was that my mother-in-law was our 'day care', and she lived across the street. We never had to drop the baby off via car before work a single time during that stretch.

Even still... Every time I read this type of story, I'm bothered internally, at a level reserved for the most disturbing situations. Even with the rear-facing seat, we had a mirror on the back seat headrest that was aimed towards his car seat... You could look into the rear view, and then see into the car seat... It was a habit. You looked into the rear view mirror at a stop light, glance during driving, when parking, and focused on the small mirror behind you to see if he was awake, sleeping, laughing, crying... whatever. I couldn't help but look.

When he was in the car, when he wasn't in the car... Didn't matter. I always looked to know he was OK.
I'm not sure if it was because I'd read this type of story before he was born, or if I was just a nervous first time father... Either way, I can't imagine how I'd live with myself for another day if I were responsible for doing this.

 

[st dude]

When i worked with homicide and grand jury this was the type of hard decision that often had to be made. There is no hard and fast answer as to when regular negligence becomes gross negligence.

Driving down a city street a kid runs into the street chasing a ball and gets hit by a lady driving a car. Negligence or criminal negligence? Charge the lady or not?

Need more facts, right? Okay, the speed limit is 25 and the lady is going 26. A crime? What if she was going 30 mph in a 25? What if she was going 80 and was drunk? Thats ones easy.

Now suppose she had been going 25 but was .06. What if she was going under speed limit but was texting but kid ran out from behind car?

All that is a long way of saying each of these cases is very fact specific. In general, I would say any parent who knowingly left a child unattended in a hot car would be criminally negligent. Even within that scenario there could be many degrees of culpability. That might be more of a sentencing issue. Most negligent homicide statutes do not have mandatory sentencing such that if the negligence was more understandable probation might be considered. The guy who leaves his kid in a car while he goes to a strip club is looking at the max sentence.

 

[coldseat]

It's 2014, you would think car manufactures could design some pressure pad hooked to a loud sounding distinct alarm that could sense if a baby was in the car seat and go off if it was left loaded after car had been turned off for 10 minutes. Just put some button or switch on the panel so that the driver could press if they have a child seat hooked up. Can't be that hard. That way we could avoid these horrible tragedies.

Hell, maybe I should invent some after market thing and go on the Shark Tank.

 

[uproar90]

Hell, maybe I should invent some after market thing and go on the Shark Tank.

I'd focus on an alert that completes a circuit when the child's buckle system is connected... Removing keys from the ignition and locking the doors would set off the alarm if the child restraint is still latched.

 

[TheDeparted]

It's 2014, you would think car manufactures could design some pressure pad hooked to a loud sounding distinct alarm that could sense if a baby was in the car seat and go off if it was left loaded after car had been turned off for 10 minutes. Just put some button or switch on the panel so that the driver could press if they have a child seat hooked up. Can't be that hard. That way we could avoid these horrible tragedies.

Hell, maybe I should invent some after market thing and go on the Shark Tank.

Already patented

I'd focus on an alert that completes a circuit when the child's buckle system is connected... Removing keys from the ignition and locking the doors would set off the alarm if the child restraint is still latched.

Already patented

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

what is the purpose of calling something a crime
does this scenario address that purpose

it seems to me most crimes are not about the criminal/victim, they're about the "audience"
our society really can't deal with ambiguity and definitely not accidents that happen to people we don't know

seems that all this "crime" does is punish people who are already punished