Li'l Sizzler Season
It’s that time of year again. The time when people leave babies in cars on hot days long enough for the child to die of hyperthermia. This happens, in the United States, roughly 35-45 times per year. Most recently, it happened in our city when two doctors (a pediatrician and a research scientist) left their 7-month-old daughter in the car. Now she’s dead, the parents are reportedly devastated, and the letters to the editor are flying fast and furious.
The more cynical among us wonder if these “accidents” are really “accidents on purpose,” since parents who leave children to die in cars are rarely prosecuted, and when they are, they usually serve less than two years in jail. Most people, though, contend that parents would never do such a thing deliberately, and that therefore, we do not need to send them to prison. The loss of their child is suffering enough.
I have mixed feelings on whether or not prison time is appropriate in these circumstances. On the one hand, prison is a punishment, and if you kill someone, some form of punishment should be exacted. On the other hand, another function of prison is to keep murderers away from the rest of us so that we’re safe, and looking at it in terms of my safety, I’m much more worried about the kid down the street who sets fires and tortures animals than the adult who cooked their own child in a car.
The article reporting the child’s death came with a sidebar listing helpful things for parents to do, including:
- Put your purse or briefcase or cell phone in the back seat as a reminder that your child is in the car.
- Keep a stuffed animal in a child’s car seat. When you put your child in the seat, put the animal in the front with you.
It is not terribly comforting that the authors of the article apparently see no irony in noting that parents will miss a cell phone before they miss their child.
So. A child dies, no one is apparently to blame, and the best advice folks can come up with is to put your cell phone with the child in the back seat. There. All done. Problem solved.
Except that several people who have written in to the paper are decrying the fact that there’s no sensor in the car to tell you when you’ve left your child behind. OK, now people are getting my attention. Letter writers argue that carmakers should invest in, and naturally pass on the cost of, child-detecting sensors in every car because 35-45 people per year can’t keep track of their own baby.
However, what these letter writers apparently don’t know is that devices to save children who have been forgotten in cars already exist. In fact, one can be purchased from this site for a mere $64.95 and $8.95 shipping. For $73.90 and a few days’ wait, you can have your very own sensor in your hands. You wouldn’t have to lobby lawmakers and then wait however many years it would take for Congress to force carmakers to install systems on every car.
As one poster put it on a Thingamababy board, these Li’l Sizzler cases should cause enough outrage to “launch nationwide campaigns.” All right. But even assuming there were nationwide campaigns, laws passed, and manufacturers forced to put these sensors on cars, would it really help anything? Millions of dollars would be spent over the course of years; buckets of crocodile tears would be poured out on national TV; campaigns will be helped or hurt by a candidate’s stand on the issue; and the price of cars will go up even further.
That’s a lot of expense and righteous indignation and anger for a problem whose solution appears to be available and affordable right now. And if one can’t afford a sensor, there’s an even cheaper option: at absolutely no cost, you can download a Baby on Board sign from this site. All you have to do is print it out and stick it in the window of your car or on your dashboard as a reminder to yourself. Isn’t every child worth at least that much trouble?
I know, I know. It was a rhetorical question.
Copyright . Published 1 September 2007 in Editorials.
Reader comments
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Great article. I totally agree with every word.
I have often wondered how a parent could possibly leave their child in the car. Just how busy do you have to be to forget your own child? I don’t buy it. I never have and I never will.
I have never so much as forgotten my purse or a bag of groceries or a box of Kleenex in my car. There is no way in hell I’d forget about a live human being. How bloody stupid do you have to be?
permalink — 3 September 2007, 05:42
Excellent article—great job pointing out the common-sense solution to this problem.
However, it seems that whenever an issue arises, the proposed solution usually has been outcry for a law for which everyone pays, rather advise the affected population to take simple, preventative, and often inexpensive steps.
Consider, for example, the safety arms now installed on every school bus. Those who pay property taxes to the school districts foot the bill. As a child, I rode a school bus during the Dark Ages; my classmates and I were trained to exit the bus and wait at the curb until the bus had travelled far enough down the street that the back of the bus had passed us. (Note that this low-cost solution also spared us from mishaps involving the rear wheels of the bus.)
permalink — 4 September 2007, 08:49
I like the order of your stories. When I read them I thought… “man has a problem, man fixes problem” It was a good read.
permalink — 6 September 2007, 06:52
I’ve always had a difficult time with this topic. Firstly, YOU PUT THE KID IN THE CAR!! Secondly, parents are all the time bingoing me with “it’s just the most amazing thing”, “it changed my life”, “I love my children more than I’ve ever loved anything before, ever”. How mouth breathing, knuckle dragging stupid do you have to be to forget you put the one thing that gives your life meaning in the car?! On a hot day? For hours on end?
permalink — 6 September 2007, 08:52
My husband’s former coworker left his child in the back of the car on a hot day. Fortunately, another employee noticed the sleeping baby in the car before it was too late. I could imagine myself making this same horrid mistake if I were a parent. Just be grateful that I am childfree and choose to remain so.
I don’t think auto manufacturers should be required to put child-detecting sensors in cars. Leaving a child in a car has nothing to do with the operation or inherent safety of the vehicle so it makes no sense for it to be a corporate responsibility. Parents are solely responsible. If leaving the cell phone in the back of the car is a helpful reminder for someone, so be it.
permalink — 10 September 2007, 09:42
We already have the ubiquitous “baby on board” stickers. Perhaps it should be mandatory for all parents to have one attached to their forehead, with a stapler? ;)
permalink — 15 September 2007, 03:41