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While it's tough to criticize the decision to leave a child in the car for a few minutes -- happened to me all the time as a child -- I'm forever scarred by see

While it's tough to criticize the decision to leave a child in the car for a few minutes -- happened to me all the time as a child -- I'm forever scarred by seeing a dead child pulled out of a car in the office complex next to mine [1]. The dad was bashing his head against a tree trying to knock himself unconscious because he was so overcome with grief. Officers were trying to restrain him when his wife showed up and went completely (understandably) histerical, pounded her fist on the ground and screaming at her husband. I can't fathom how one could begin to process and move on from such an incident. So while I don't think it should be illegal to leave a child in the car, personally that's a line I'll not cross with my kids. [1]http://www.khou.com/news/Baby-left-in-hot-truck-dies-in-Austin-122663114.html http://www.khou.com/news/Baby-left-in-hot-truck-dies-in-Aust...

jbellis 12y ago
The very big difference is that child-bakes-in-the-car heat deaths are not because Dad left the kids in the car while he ran in to the store for a few minutes, but because Dad forgot the kid was in the car at all. http://www.parenting.com/article/tragedy-in-the-backseat-hot-car-deaths?cid=plusblog http://www.parenting.com/article/tragedy-in-the-backseat-hot...
- DanBC 12y ago
  Parent runs into store for few minutes, trips and knocks head becoming unconcious / has stroke / has heart attack / etc etc - child dies. Having said that, This story is a really good example of how tough it is for some parents and how hostile society is to parenting.
  - baddox 12y ago
    If the father became unconscious, had a stroke or a heart attack, etc. while driving or doing anything with the child away from other people, the child could die.
    - anigbrowl 12y ago
      Yes, but people would know the child was there. If someone fall down unconscious in the middle of the supermarket nobody knows which car they arrived in, or even for sure that they arrived in a car, and nobody knows about the unattended child. That's a different kind of risk. On the other hand, for the person in the parking lot to film the child in the car and call police, but not make any contact with the child or wait by the car, borders on malice. Police and prosecutors should investigate but heavily discount such pseudo-testimony because it is deliberately presented without context.
      - DanBC 12y ago
        Approaching a young child who has been left alone in a car is foolish in today's paranoic society. Also, the returning parent is unlikely to be grateful to the comments of "I was just making sure your left alone child was not dying".
        darklajid 12y ago
        That is an entirely different world of crazy that doesn't belong here, does it? Are we going to turn this into a 'You need to be careful about talking to a child' debate? If you cannot address/talk to a child, things are worse OUTSIDE of that car.
        DanBC 12y ago
        Of course it belongs here! In a sensible world she would have been able to call out to some car-park lurker "hey I'm just going to grab something from the store, can you just wave at my kid through this window"; or she could just run in and grab something and people seeing her run in and then out would not call the police; or etc etc. Society has decided that men wanting to work with children are creepy (try finding pre-schools with male workers and early years schools with male teachers), and this extends to the damaging concept of "stranger danger" where someone waiting by the car to check the child is safe is not going to be seen as a welcome bit of support for a busy harassed mother but will be seen as a creepy threat. It's all part of the same weird system of protecting children without regard to what actual risk is.
  - imgabe 12y ago
    Parent is driving the car and has a heart attack/stroke/etc. Car crashes and child dies. I guess we better make it illegal for parents to drive cars with kids in them.
  - revelation 12y ago
    How hostile society is to parenting? Did I read that right? Parents have free reign to brainwash their kids into some religious cult. Then theres the whole homeschooling thing - yes, enlightened HN readers will protest that they are able to give their kids a better education than the crappy public school system could, but lets face it, home schooling is as much a cover for the many nutjobs out there that don't want the scientific method taught in school. Lets not start on vaccines. Basically, until you are 18, you belong to your parents and have zero rights, treated as a child by society. It's funny how we all forget this once we turn into adults.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      You make some good points about parental rights. Look at vaccinations. (Vaccinations are good; I had no hesitation having my child immunised; I'd like schools to require immunisations for pupils; etc). The early days of the vaccination scandal were not presented as a bit of scientific research, it was "you, as a parent, are harming your child by vaccinating them" (and that's still what the nutjobs are saying). Now that we know that Wakefield is a crook we tend not to say "you were duped by a crook who had financial interests in misleading you so let's help you get your child immunised", we say "you're a nutjob and a bad parent". Look at HN where parents feel guilt about work life balance for one example of how hard it is to be a parent in a rich first world country. Look at the number of people on HN who (ignoring law) say they would hesitate to employ women because of the risk of maternity leave. The fact that "having a child" has to be written into legislation as a protected status shows that status of parents was seen as needing protection.
    - crystalmace 12y ago
      While I recognize that homeschooling is done by some because of their religious beliefs, and yes, some of those beliefs are pretty unusual, I would like to remind you that homeschooling is actually not 100% a cover for the nutjobs out there. I was homeschooled, and I'm now graduated highschool at 16. Homeschooling is a great way to avoid the mess and poor education that is public school, and in my experience with other homeschoolers, there aren't as many nutjobs as you seem to think. I apologize if I missed the point of what you were saying, but I wished to present an alternative view of homeschooling.
  - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
    I think like this, always able to consider the worst case scenario. So, whilst I've left my kid(s) in the car on occassions I've never left them without leaving the window open a bit ... of course that makes it easier to open the door and kidnap them ...
    - DanBC 12y ago
      Well, the worse case scenario is that a parent takes the child out of the car and a truck plows into them both leaving them alive but severely brain damaged, requiring 24 hour care. The truck driver is poor and has no insurance, and the parent was inadaquately insured too.
      - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
        And the truck was driven by the other parent. Yes, my brain can play that game all day.
- jongraehl 12y ago
  I was always allowed and encouraged to open doors+windows while waiting in a car as a child.
- awj 12y ago
  Even the link you cited claims that 15 minutes can be enough time under surprisingly temperate conditions. I've easily spent that amount of time waiting through lines on something that should have been a quick run to the store.
darklajid 12y ago
As with lots of things: The details matter. Leaving a kid in a car shouldn't be an offense. Not returning ~soon~ might be and might be a reason to call the cops/force the car open. Parents can damage/kill their kids in uncountable ways. Most don't and really try to avoid that. Trying to watch over their shoulder isn't 'Good citizenship', it's crazy and a witch hunt. You start to be labeled as child abuser if your kid is crying like hell (toothing maybe, or really interested in strawberries that you don't like to hand out - but the people around you don't understand that, don't have the slightest bit of clue about the situation. More often than not, OTHER parents are worse than the rest). Give it a rest. The scenario you describe sounds terrible. But it's not relevant to the situation at hand. The person in the article describes that she checked the temperature, knew how long it'd take (even had a deadline on multiple levels, not only 'Today I do not want to choke my kid in the car' - she even planned to take a flight before the kid could have taken any damage. More seriously, a parent decided something for her kid. Something she does gazillion times a day. People might object to a number of her decisions and this particular one got her in trouble? Someone 'snitched'? Sad. The system failed. I understand: - someone was worried, called the cops - cops reacted (yay!) But: - before cops arrived, kid was gone and obviously safe with the parent - charges were pressed, just because? One word: Insane. I'm a father of two, both younger than the kid in the car. edit: One of the worst typos I made so far.
- now 12y ago
  It was worse than that. Someone wasn’t worried. Instead of acting, by, say, trying to talk to the kid in the car or perhaps just calling the cops, they “recorded the incident using a phone’s camera, and had then contacted the police”. Baffling. By the way, this is what I think of every time I hear someone use the phrase ”a good samaritan”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIVB3DdRgqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIVB3DdRgqU
- anigbrowl 12y ago
  - before cops arrived, kid was gone and obviously safe with the parent The second half of your premise contains two completely unwarranted assumptions. How exactly were the police supposed to know the now-departed child was a) safe and b) with his parent? Recall that the Mom who wrote the piece was driving a vehicle that wasn't registered to her and so therefore didn't match the description on the registered owners' driving licenses. We know with hindsight that she had borrowed her parents' minivan for the trip, but the police would not have been justified in making that inference.
drzaiusapelord 12y ago
How much would it add to the cost of a car to put in a little solar panel and a fan or two that would bring in cooler air into the cabin on hot days? It would help avoid situations like these (or at least increase chances of survival) and keep the interior from being a scorching simulation of the surface of the sun. I think some models had this in the 90s, but it never caught on. Supposedly, if memory serves from an old issue of Motor Trend, just a couple small fans could drop the temperature almost 20 degrees on really hot days. So a 100 degree interior would be 80, which could mean the difference between life and death.
- ktsmith 12y ago
  Audi started making this an option in 2008 (2007?) on their A8 line and was followed by Fisker and Toyota on the Prius. i don't think any of them have it as an option any more. It's just not effective enough.
mcv 12y ago
The thing is, something could happen to you while you're away. The few minutes in the car won't hurt the child, but if something happens to you, the child is still there. And if you locked the car, the child can't get out. I'm all for letting kids play with little or no supervision. (Depending on the surroundings, of course; a place near my home where kids can build huts has the explicit rule that kids under 8 need adult supervision at all times, which makes total sense. A mother was upset that someone confiscated the hammer and saw her kids were using while she was away. That mother was wrong.) But what's important is that if you trust your child to take care of itself, you give it the means to do so. Locking a kid in a car is not that. I'd rather let it play in the parking lot or a field next to it. So I think the decision to leave the kid in the car is still a bad one. And not even just because of the danger, but because of teaching it about choice and consequences: The kid wanted to come along to the shop? Then it's coming inside. The kid thinks a game is more important than new earphones? Then it's not getting new earphones. Teach the kid consequences.

jbellis 12y ago

The very big difference is that child-bakes-in-the-car heat deaths are not because Dad left the kids in the car while he ran in to the store for a few minutes, but because Dad forgot the kid was in the car at all. http://www.parenting.com/article/tragedy-in-the-backseat-hot-car-deaths?cid=plusblog http://www.parenting.com/article/tragedy-in-the-backseat-hot...

DanBC 12y ago
Parent runs into store for few minutes, trips and knocks head becoming unconcious / has stroke / has heart attack / etc etc - child dies. Having said that, This story is a really good example of how tough it is for some parents and how hostile society is to parenting.
- baddox 12y ago
  If the father became unconscious, had a stroke or a heart attack, etc. while driving or doing anything with the child away from other people, the child could die.
  - anigbrowl 12y ago
    Yes, but people would know the child was there. If someone fall down unconscious in the middle of the supermarket nobody knows which car they arrived in, or even for sure that they arrived in a car, and nobody knows about the unattended child. That's a different kind of risk. On the other hand, for the person in the parking lot to film the child in the car and call police, but not make any contact with the child or wait by the car, borders on malice. Police and prosecutors should investigate but heavily discount such pseudo-testimony because it is deliberately presented without context.
    - DanBC 12y ago
      Approaching a young child who has been left alone in a car is foolish in today's paranoic society. Also, the returning parent is unlikely to be grateful to the comments of "I was just making sure your left alone child was not dying".
      - darklajid 12y ago
        That is an entirely different world of crazy that doesn't belong here, does it? Are we going to turn this into a 'You need to be careful about talking to a child' debate? If you cannot address/talk to a child, things are worse OUTSIDE of that car.
        DanBC 12y ago
        Of course it belongs here! In a sensible world she would have been able to call out to some car-park lurker "hey I'm just going to grab something from the store, can you just wave at my kid through this window"; or she could just run in and grab something and people seeing her run in and then out would not call the police; or etc etc. Society has decided that men wanting to work with children are creepy (try finding pre-schools with male workers and early years schools with male teachers), and this extends to the damaging concept of "stranger danger" where someone waiting by the car to check the child is safe is not going to be seen as a welcome bit of support for a busy harassed mother but will be seen as a creepy threat. It's all part of the same weird system of protecting children without regard to what actual risk is.
- imgabe 12y ago
  Parent is driving the car and has a heart attack/stroke/etc. Car crashes and child dies. I guess we better make it illegal for parents to drive cars with kids in them.
- revelation 12y ago
  How hostile society is to parenting? Did I read that right? Parents have free reign to brainwash their kids into some religious cult. Then theres the whole homeschooling thing - yes, enlightened HN readers will protest that they are able to give their kids a better education than the crappy public school system could, but lets face it, home schooling is as much a cover for the many nutjobs out there that don't want the scientific method taught in school. Lets not start on vaccines. Basically, until you are 18, you belong to your parents and have zero rights, treated as a child by society. It's funny how we all forget this once we turn into adults.
  - DanBC 12y ago
    You make some good points about parental rights. Look at vaccinations. (Vaccinations are good; I had no hesitation having my child immunised; I'd like schools to require immunisations for pupils; etc). The early days of the vaccination scandal were not presented as a bit of scientific research, it was "you, as a parent, are harming your child by vaccinating them" (and that's still what the nutjobs are saying). Now that we know that Wakefield is a crook we tend not to say "you were duped by a crook who had financial interests in misleading you so let's help you get your child immunised", we say "you're a nutjob and a bad parent". Look at HN where parents feel guilt about work life balance for one example of how hard it is to be a parent in a rich first world country. Look at the number of people on HN who (ignoring law) say they would hesitate to employ women because of the risk of maternity leave. The fact that "having a child" has to be written into legislation as a protected status shows that status of parents was seen as needing protection.
  - crystalmace 12y ago
    While I recognize that homeschooling is done by some because of their religious beliefs, and yes, some of those beliefs are pretty unusual, I would like to remind you that homeschooling is actually not 100% a cover for the nutjobs out there. I was homeschooled, and I'm now graduated highschool at 16. Homeschooling is a great way to avoid the mess and poor education that is public school, and in my experience with other homeschoolers, there aren't as many nutjobs as you seem to think. I apologize if I missed the point of what you were saying, but I wished to present an alternative view of homeschooling.
- pbhjpbhj 12y ago
  I think like this, always able to consider the worst case scenario. So, whilst I've left my kid(s) in the car on occassions I've never left them without leaving the window open a bit ... of course that makes it easier to open the door and kidnap them ...
  - DanBC 12y ago
    Well, the worse case scenario is that a parent takes the child out of the car and a truck plows into them both leaving them alive but severely brain damaged, requiring 24 hour care. The truck driver is poor and has no insurance, and the parent was inadaquately insured too.
    - pbhjpbhj 12y ago
      And the truck was driven by the other parent. Yes, my brain can play that game all day.
jongraehl 12y ago
I was always allowed and encouraged to open doors+windows while waiting in a car as a child.
awj 12y ago
Even the link you cited claims that 15 minutes can be enough time under surprisingly temperate conditions. I've easily spent that amount of time waiting through lines on something that should have been a quick run to the store.

darklajid 12y ago

As with lots of things: The details matter. Leaving a kid in a car shouldn't be an offense. Not returning ~soon~ might be and might be a reason to call the cops/force the car open. Parents can damage/kill their kids in uncountable ways. Most don't and really try to avoid that. Trying to watch over their shoulder isn't 'Good citizenship', it's crazy and a witch hunt. You start to be labeled as child abuser if your kid is crying like hell (toothing maybe, or really interested in strawberries that you don't like to hand out - but the people around you don't understand that, don't have the slightest bit of clue about the situation. More often than not, OTHER parents are worse than the rest). Give it a rest. The scenario you describe sounds terrible. But it's not relevant to the situation at hand. The person in the article describes that she checked the temperature, knew how long it'd take (even had a deadline on multiple levels, not only 'Today I do not want to choke my kid in the car' - she even planned to take a flight before the kid could have taken any damage. More seriously, a parent decided something for her kid. Something she does gazillion times a day. People might object to a number of her decisions and this particular one got her in trouble? Someone 'snitched'? Sad. The system failed. I understand: - someone was worried, called the cops - cops reacted (yay!) But: - before cops arrived, kid was gone and obviously safe with the parent - charges were pressed, just because? One word: Insane. I'm a father of two, both younger than the kid in the car. edit: One of the worst typos I made so far.

now 12y ago
It was worse than that. Someone wasn’t worried. Instead of acting, by, say, trying to talk to the kid in the car or perhaps just calling the cops, they “recorded the incident using a phone’s camera, and had then contacted the police”. Baffling. By the way, this is what I think of every time I hear someone use the phrase ”a good samaritan”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIVB3DdRgqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIVB3DdRgqU
anigbrowl 12y ago
- before cops arrived, kid was gone and obviously safe with the parent The second half of your premise contains two completely unwarranted assumptions. How exactly were the police supposed to know the now-departed child was a) safe and b) with his parent? Recall that the Mom who wrote the piece was driving a vehicle that wasn't registered to her and so therefore didn't match the description on the registered owners' driving licenses. We know with hindsight that she had borrowed her parents' minivan for the trip, but the police would not have been justified in making that inference.

drzaiusapelord 12y ago

How much would it add to the cost of a car to put in a little solar panel and a fan or two that would bring in cooler air into the cabin on hot days? It would help avoid situations like these (or at least increase chances of survival) and keep the interior from being a scorching simulation of the surface of the sun. I think some models had this in the 90s, but it never caught on. Supposedly, if memory serves from an old issue of Motor Trend, just a couple small fans could drop the temperature almost 20 degrees on really hot days. So a 100 degree interior would be 80, which could mean the difference between life and death.

ktsmith 12y ago
Audi started making this an option in 2008 (2007?) on their A8 line and was followed by Fisker and Toyota on the Prius. i don't think any of them have it as an option any more. It's just not effective enough.

mcv 12y ago

The thing is, something could happen to you while you're away. The few minutes in the car won't hurt the child, but if something happens to you, the child is still there. And if you locked the car, the child can't get out. I'm all for letting kids play with little or no supervision. (Depending on the surroundings, of course; a place near my home where kids can build huts has the explicit rule that kids under 8 need adult supervision at all times, which makes total sense. A mother was upset that someone confiscated the hammer and saw her kids were using while she was away. That mother was wrong.) But what's important is that if you trust your child to take care of itself, you give it the means to do so. Locking a kid in a car is not that. I'd rather let it play in the parking lot or a field next to it. So I think the decision to leave the kid in the car is still a bad one. And not even just because of the danger, but because of teaching it about choice and consequences: The kid wanted to come along to the shop? Then it's coming inside. The kid thinks a game is more important than new earphones? Then it's not getting new earphones. Teach the kid consequences.