Posted on 03/17/2009 8:22:37 PM PDT by HaplessToad
The defendant was an immense man, well over 300 pounds, but in the gravity of his sorrow and shame he seemed larger still. He hunched forward in the sturdy wooden armchair that barely contained him, sobbing softly into tissue after tissue...
"Death by hyperthermia" is the official designation. When it happens to young children, the facts are often the same: An otherwise loving and attentive parent one day gets busy, or distracted, or upset, or confused by a change in his or her daily routine, and just... forgets a child is in the car. It happens that way somewhere in the United States 15 to 25 times a year, parceled out through the spring, summer and early fall. The season is almost upon us...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
In the “good old days”, there was no problem with putting the car seat in the front seat. With the newer cars that have air bags, there is a big problem. Having that air bag explode in even a minor crash and hit the car seat will very often kill a child - sometimes by decapitation. That’s why many pickups have a switch to turn off the passenger side air bag. And before people start ranting about “stupid nanny state laws”, in over 30 years of EMT work I’ve seen a lot of people who are alive today because they had seat belts and air bags. I’ve also seen a lot of people who were dead because they didn’t bother with the seat belts and didn’t stay in the vehicle. And please, don’t get me started about what happens to un-restrained children. Yeah, I know, you and I survived - how many didn’t?
Can't someone invent a special interior motion car alarm that will solve this problem!!!!!!!!!!!
The full article described a case that illustrated why a motion alarm might not always be effective.
Sleeping infants can be so absolutely silent that it is not hard to understand how this can happen sometimes after someone drives a long distance with them out of sight in the back seat. I never left my child in the car but I am a little absent-minded and I would have to say: "There but for the grace of God ..."
LOL I’m also a SAHM/homeschooler and have a six year old. He talks so much that if he happens to be at home with dad while I’m running errands, I’m out of sorts the entire time. For me, forgetting my kids would be like forgetting to get dressed!!! But no judgment, I sure feel badly for someone who geniunely was a good parent and made a mistake like that.
This was not an accident. This was negligence, criminal negligence.
This kind of story is an annual Summer news event, like the winter fires blamed on space heaters. And it is almost always a Child Care Provider, probably licensed by the state, who leaves a trusting toddler in the back of a 20 passenger bus to die of exposure.
My thoughts are with the child, the trusting innocence of the child who's last thoughts are hope against hope that someone, any one, will be along any moment now to rescue me from this discomfort. A child who cannot verbalize their trust, and who dies, not knowing they will not awaken again.
Sorry, folks. There are exceptions, there are accidents, there is also the deliberate ignorance that used to be called stupidity. This is why Justice should wear a blindfold, so we can't intervene to save someone from the consequences of being deliberately ignorant.
Is the government at fault? Yes, surely, more for its making the Extended Family obsolete than for its attempts to tie soft pillows to all the sharp edges of the world.
It's a good argument for the death penalty, too. We don't have a punishment that fits the crime, here. Send him to God and let Him decide what to do with him. From what I'm hearing on this site, tonight, it sounds very much as though a lot of people believe, as I do, that there are a lot worse things that can happen to you than losing your life...
The one thing I cannot do is "blame Society." Save that line for the applause comment on Oprah.
The stats are that approximately 10 times as many children die each year from being forgotten in cars, as before these no-children-on-front laws started getting enacted. An additional factor is the increasing prevalence of dark windows, which are not allowed on the front seat driver/passenger side windows due to driver visibility, but are allowed for the back seat windows. Parents are forced to put their little ones in the back seat, and if there are dark windows, not only does this reduce the chance of the parent seeing/remembering the child as the parent gets out, but it also greatly reduces the chance of a passer-by noticing the child. In at least a few cases, a child has died after many hours in the back seat of a car in a very busy open-air parking lot (on one case a hospital parking lot!).
Can’t someone invent a special interior motion car alarm that will solve this problem!!!!!!!!!!!
I saw a woman drive away from a gas station with pump still engaged because she was on a cell phone. Broke pump and gas spilled all over!
Sadly, we may see more of these sad stories with the economic woes.
The big problem with airbags is that they’re designed to protect an UNbelted large adult male. An adult male has a choice as to whether to fasten his seat belt or not, and sacrificing the lives of many children, as well as smaller adults (particularly women and fragile elderly) to save some @$$holes who refuse to buckle their seat belts, is just plain obscene.
I will never own a car with functioning airbags, and it pisses me off to no end that I can’t disable the airbags on rental cars. A simple one-touch disabling button should be standard equipment on any vehicle with airbags.
The article addressed this. Dad had it. The alarm kept going off, so he used the remote to deactivate it. Kid died.
“Can’t someone invent a special interior motion car alarm that will solve this problem!!!!!!!!!!!”
Been done. I saw a car ad on tv several years ago where a woman was advancing on her parked car in a dark empty lot and her key fob told her there was a heartbeat detected inside her vehicle and she ran away. This was some available option and I’m pretty sure it was for real.
Can’t someone invent a special interior motion car alarm that will solve this problem!!!!!!!!!!!”
Been done. I saw a car ad on tv several years ago where a woman was advancing on her parked car in a dark empty lot and her key fob told her there was a heartbeat detected inside her vehicle and she ran away. This was some available option and I’m pretty sure it was for real.
“The big problem with airbags is that they’re designed to protect an UNbelted large adult male”
Actually, they are designed to be used in conjunction with seat belts. From the National Highway Traffic Safety Commission:
“# Frontal air bags do not eliminate the need for seat belts, but are a supplement to them.
# Occupants who are unbelted or seated too close to the frontal air bag module when the air bag deploys can be seriously injured or killed.”
Think about it. If you are unbelted in a crash, you are going to be right up against the air bag when it deploys. Consider what that will do to you.... If you want an even more graphic image, think about those passengers that like to ride down the highway with their feet on the dash...
The advice has always been to wear seatbelts even if the car has airbags (and state laws still require seatbelts anyway), but the reality of the level of force that was built in to airbags originally, was designed to protect an unbelted adult male. After enough people got killed and seriouly injured by airbags, the force was slightly reduced, but is still extremely dangerous.
Did any cars have seat belts in the 50s? Not that I can remember.
We have to take into account the number of cars on the road during that era compared with the gradual increase of vehicles on the highways today.
The traffic has grown tremendously and with it, risks become greater.
It’s illegal to have a child in the front seat, because the Government Air Bag (not to be confused with a Democrat Senator) will kill children. (Just like a Democrat baby-killer, but still, not the same thing.)
Government’s answer to child safety in motor vehicles:
Step 1 - drug your child.
Step 2 - lock the child down in large plastic contraption.
Step 3 - fasten contraption in back seat away from any peripheral vision.
Step 4 - force child to stare at the upholstery throughout the trip until it is bored and falls asleep.
Step 5 - try to remember child is there once arriving at your destination like any other piece of luggage.
Yes, I know it’s illegal now. Dead kids in the backseat is one of the unintended consequences (or at least acceptable losses) of the nanny state.
How did any of us survive childhod without the government micromanaging our upbringings ?
Most of my life seat belts were not required and frankly, I wish I could skip that feature today. Nevertheless, I've used the seat belts for years.
As happened, six years ago my car was hit so forcefully on the passenger side that the car was thrown off the road, totally damaged.
When a passerby told me to stay in the car, I said, "Why?" I could see the car was smoking through the rear-view mirror and I got out of there!
My foot was injured...not drastically. Without my seat belt, it could have been much worse.
As I said, I totaled the car but not me.
I was a child in the 60’s and Mom tells me the story of the day that I fell out of the car. She turned a corner, the door swung open and I was a toddler and tumbled out, landing in the snowy road...so bundled up in my snowsuit that there was nary a bruise or scratch.
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