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The point is that you don't flag down cops for parents driving their children down the road, which is the bigger risk to their safety.

• tptacek 12y ago
  That's not true, but the fact that you think it's true is one of the reasons I find this article so off-putting, because the article tries its hardest to set up that bogus comparison. I want to say something here about the base rate fallacy, but I'm too tired and impatient to figure out how to articulate it.
  • scotty79 12y ago
    I don't see how would base rate fallacy apply if you compare child death rate per hour of being driven around and per hour of being left unattended in a car.
  • notdonspaulding 12y ago
    > ... I'm too tired and impatient to figure out how to articulate it. I wish you'd have given it a go. It sounds like an argument about evaluating the risks of an action proportional to the frequency of that action being taken. If that's the case, it seems the best conclusion you could hope to come to is "we don't have enough data". Because there's no way to know how often parents leave their kids in cars without incident, and no way to know how many parents would leave their kids in their cars were it socially acceptable.
    • aidenn0 12y ago
      It's almost certainly possible to come up with an estimate for how often parents leave their kids in cars. If by "we" you meant those of us currently discussing it on HN right now, then maybe you're right. Either way, it's obvious that more kids are driven in cars than are left in cars (since nearly all kids left in cars were also driven in them as part of that trip).
    • deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]