They'll do anything for money. True whores, in the most base and soulless sense of the word.

not trying to be soulless here but not everyone has kids.

I can see any auto exec saying "they can buy some aftermarket gizmos, it's not our job to watch their children, we just make cars..."

And that is a totally reasonable argument, they can offer it as an option, at an inflated price, but keep your kids out of my car.

Don'tcallme: There's one bit that I thought of putting in, but then cut because of length: the article talks about aftermarket versions of this, and why they have not worked. Part of it is liability, although offhand the fact that smoke detectors (which would seem to face the same liability problems: if they fail, someone could die) are reasonably priced would seem to suggest that that's not an insuperable obstacle.

But there's another part: "The problem is this simple: People think this could never happen to them." -- Actually, I think it's also: no one wants to think they could do this. Aftermarket seat belts would be different, I think: everyone knows you can get into accidents in which you are not at fault. But not everyone knows, or would want to think, that they could do this.

I dunno about that sensor thingy. What if you have some books or laundry or something in your back seat? What if you want to pull over from a long car trip to take a quick nap in the back? Is an alarm going to go off and keep you from sleeping?

Maybe it would be better to put a temperature gauge-based alarm inside of the actual infant car seat. If the gauge goes above 90 degrees, an alarm goes off. That way, only parents are paying for this thing - not the average car buyer. And there would be fewer false alarms.

Well, no, I guess that wouldnt work since the point is to take the kid out of the car *before* it gets hot. Anyway, it seems to me that adding something to the kid's car seat makes more sense than adding something to the car.

It never made the final bill; sponsors withdrew it, fearing they couldn't get it past a powerful auto manufacturers' lobby."

And can you imagine the congress critters who were too chicken to fight, or agreed with the lobbyists?

One point omitted: This was a Gene Weingarten story. Weingarten, who usually writes the humor column on the back page of the WaPo Magazine, is the best writer on the Post staff and one of the best in the country. The humor articles are reason enough to follow him, but a few times a year he lets loose with an extended piece such as this. Don't know why he hasn't won a Pulitzer; it's too bad American journalism doesn't have a Nobel-type prize for cumulative work. If he was collected more often he'd be another Lewis Grizzard. (If you don't know him, look him up.) He's better than his friend Dave Barry. (Again....) Okay -- he's a hell of a lot better than Andy Borowitz. This is the most serious piece he's done, though. Apparently he felt it deeply.

I agree with the above posters that a simple weight sensor is probably too easy to fool with inanimate objects or small adults.

Remember how it took years for car alarms not to go off at the wrong moment - someone walking by or jingling their keys or whatever? Now they seem to work much better.

I'm sure they can work at a similar good algorithm to trip if there's a child in a back seat - but it would probably take a while, involve the development of smart car seats that communicate with the car, and not be a simple or inexpensive fix.

Unless adding a sensor would cause some truly horrific problem for the car

Even kids dying doesn't come close.

I am, on the whole, very sympathetic to the general idea of spacing out, even on important things. But leaving a child, or pet, in a car in the heat with the windows rolled up? If the safety of a child or pet is really paramount, then this seems like an unlikely scenario. If, on the other hand, safety is on the same level with errands and other affairs . . . well then . . .

Maybe there's an obvious problem with this, but why not require the sensors to be in children's car seats, rather than the cars themselves? Aren't there car-seat laws on the books in every state? And certainly, there must be regulations on the manufacture of those seats, some standards that they have to meet. Wouldn't the sensors be more efficiently used there, rather than the back seats of every car in America?

What about the car seat itself?
Could it be designed to prevent the problem?

Yeah I really don't like the demonization of people who have to balance the interests of literally millions of potential car buyers as the arbiters of ultimate evil because they're making a practical economic decision.

Babies will still die even with the best technology. No technology is perfect, but everyone would have the price of their vehicles increased. Going at this from the baby seat side makes about a million times more sense. That was probably the lobbyists argument, or it was if they weren't the embodiment of evil you make them out to be.

I could look myself in the mirror just fine. I don't believe such a sensor would work (the first time someone was annoyed by the thing going off because he put a suitcase in the back seat, it would be disabled). And I think they'd add an unreasonable and unnecessary expense to all the cars belonging to people who don't have kids.

I'd say "put it in the carseat", but then I remember all the times my son fell asleep while we were driving and we let him finish his nap after we parked. An alarm going off would have been very annoying.

I don't want to minimize the tragedy of this, but it's really quite rare; it's hard to justify spending the money on a technofix when there are so many other things that need fixing.

Plus, technofixes are prone to failure. If I was really worried about this, I'd attach a stretchy cord and bracelet to the seat, put it on whenever I was driving with the baby. It'd be cheaper and probably more effective than a weight sensor.

Eric: Gene won a Pulitzer last year for his bit where he had a. World-class violinist busk in the Metro at rush hour to watch people's reactions.

I can't believe the only solution for saving the approximately 20 children who die per year from this sort of accident is to require everyone in the US, even those without children, to have a backseat warning device in their car. The other ideas seem worth exploring.

In general, I would prefer a systematic approach to car safety. These accidents are horrible, but so are most traffic deaths if you look at them very closely. I would rather we invest to prevent the most deaths rather than to prevent a fewer number of more salient deaths. The number of deaths from auto accidents is around 35,000 per year. If we could add a device to cars that stopped 1/10 of 1% of general fatalities, it would save more people than a device that stopped all of these child accident deaths. Should we require all cars to have those rear-view cameras to stop drivers from running over people when backing up? Or a device that stops the car from starting unless the child safety seat is actually fastened? Or that requires a breathalyzer test before starting a car? Or how about if we just lowered speed limits to 55 mph again? I bet all of these would save more children's lives than this heat sensor. We should start with whichever idea will save the most lives.

--RiMac

Once, on automatic pilot, I walked out of a playgroup with my two-year-old child, and a friend with her two-year-old child, leaving my infant in his carseat in the building. We laughed when we got to my car and realized I had forgotten my son -- but it makes me realize how easily this could happen. One of these deaths happened in my city and the parent was completely demonized by the press but this could happen to anyone.

Rad that article yesterday and spent the night waking up, in cold sweat, at 30min intervals "I left the baby in the car!" The weird thing is that, when my son was a baby -- 32yrs ago -- I neither had a car, nor knew how to drive (didn't learn until he was almost 16)

I'd be for the sensor to be installed in the baby seat itself, too, but am not sure whether it's possible. Just as, when you turn the ignition on and don't have the seat belt on, the car screeches to alert you, it would have to do the same thing in reverse -- you turn the ignition off, it screeches until you remove the contents of the car seat. But, for that, the car seat/infant carrier would have to be connected to the car's electrical system, raising all sorts of problems of compatibility between the multitude of car seats and the multitude of cars. Not to mention that the car seats would, probably, have to be professionally installed (at the car dealers?).

I grew up in the South. A few minutes in a closed up car in the summer would be deadly.

But how many kids die in the winter? Does it ever happen? Maybe not.

My reason for liking the cold climates is that you can always put more clothes on if you are cold, but you can only take so many off if you are hot.

I guess my point is that there may exist a class of parents who think it is okay to leave their kids in the car for a limited period of time. This is the precipitating behavior. But in a particular instance, this behavior leads to disaster. If we don't investigate the history of how these unfortunate parents ended up leaving their kids in the car on a hot day we may never be able to offer useful advice.

Why? Because we can't allow exceptions or wiggle room in this area. Leaving your kid in the car is always dangerous. It is never safe. And it would be somewhat strange if even a modest fraction of these deaths occurred the first time a parent left them in the car...alone.

This is like getting caught smoking pot for the first time. If so, you deserve to go to jail for a long time.

It's amazing that the simplest solution has not been mentioned. Turn off the air bag on the passenger side and allow parents to place car seats in the passenger seat in front. The entire problem is a result of the fixation of the safety lobby on passenger airbags. They have resisted the installation of a switch that would turn off that air bag which has killed a number of small stature adults and older children. There is now a weight sensor that controls the seat air bag for this reason but there are still laws against placing infant and child seats in the front passenger seats. It would be far less likely to leave a child in the car when they are next to the driver. Fortunately, my children grew up before the safety nuts got control of the law. My grandchildren are not so lucky.

I was hooked to that article over the weekend and now I want to find out whether that poor couple that adopted the Russian baby will have another one.

All of Gene Weingarten's long WaPo mag pieces are incredibly good. Go search the archives.

Interesting Gender Experience

I'm kind of slow, so I haven't fully grasped the fact that the Political Animal(s) aren't Kevin Drum any more (my hippocampus knows but I was reading on automatic pilot). This means I read the post assuming it was written by a man.

Now I have a very high opinion of Drum, but I was struck by the compassion, sensitivity, and humility of the post, the immediate sympathy for the parent as well as the deceased child, the readiness to face the possibility that the author might do such a thing (there but for the grace of my child crying go I).

I was particularly struck by the immediate concern about the spouses of such parents and the realization (yes it's true) that this is a very different horror than the horror of being the forgetful parent. Odd, I thought that he is so deeply married that he automatically thinks "spouse" even when in the furthest hypothetical speculation imaginable.

Then I got to the end of the post and read "hilzoy." I felt sharp disappointment. Oh yeah nothing special here, the post wasn't written by an amazingly sensitive, compassionate humble (oh and wise) man. It was written by a woman. Nothing remarkable.

Now I don't consider myself a monstrously sexist self hating male, or rather I didn't, but you got to admit that I have issues.

p.s. 12 out of 229 of the words in my comment on sensitivity compassion and humility are the word "I."

I'm for a fix not just because it would save lives, but because this seems like such a horrific thing. Imagine what it's like for the kid. Recall that dying this way can take *hours*. Imagine what it's like for the parent who did this. Imagine what it's like for the other parent. I mean, it just gets worse and worse the more you think about it.

Read the article. All the way to the end. It. Is. Amazing.

This isn't about people "leaving" their children in the car when they go to do something. This is people who forget that they haven't dropped the children off at daycare, pull into the parking lot at work, and dash of to their office with their sleeping child still in the carseat.

The problem with alarms. One of the fathers had one. It went off. He thought "Why's that going off. I dropped the kid at daycare." He turned off the alarm. The kid died.

Memory is a very strange and fallible thing, folks.

I meant to say: an especially horrific thing. I didn't mean to imply that normal fatal car accidents were not horrific.

I'm sure there is a way to put an RFID on a keychain that's linked to a weight sensor in the car seat. Once triggered (by putting the child in the car seat), the alarm would go off when the keys got too far away from the seat.

I think an aftermarket solution is possible. Sounds like a nice niche that needs filled.

As a mother of 2 & resident of texas, I am horrified every summer of the local gore.
I suspect that a republican hired the lobbyist and since we all know, lobbyists have no souls, it was an easy gig.
It still bothers me that people act as though the auto industry is some "force greater that humanity". They (american brands) build shitty products that are WAY below par compared to the rest of the world. I'm sure the Germans would eat up this sensor & any other safety enhancements that can be added to the overall value of their superior products.
When ford, gm & chrysler can get all their vehicles above 35mpgm I’ll retract my "shitty" comment & replace it with something more relevant.

I don't know much about neurobiology (in fact I know practically nothing) but even I know enough to know that the "molecular physiologist quoted in the Post" is exaggerating.

When we go on automatic pilot we do *not* hand control over to our basal ganglia. Remnants of the lizard brain are recognizable in our skulls, but they have lost their old capacities.

Consider another tragedy, strikes which cause hemi paralysis. People can lose control over, say, their left arm. The damaged area of the brain can be determined. It is not in the basal ganglia. It is part of the cerebral cortex.

I guess the molecular physiologist's over simplification is obvious. In his or her story most of the brain is missing (two thirds of the cerebral cortex, the cerebellum, the thalamus, the hypothalamus the pons the black stuff (in latin) bunch of stuff I've forgotten about).

In spite of my almost total ignorance, I admit I have an opinion about brains on automatic pilot. I think the brain we use on automatic pilot is basically all of it but the cerebral cortex (note not the hippocampus memories don't help us if we don't look for them anymore than The Google meant the W Bush wasn't ignorant anymore).

I think there is a good bit of evidence for this view from the impulsive emotional behavior of people with damage to the prefrontal cortex and from functional MEI which says the prefrontal cortex is highly active when we need manual over-ride (as in when we are responding to trick questions like "do you say the yolk of eggs is white or the yolks of eggs are white"). An actual example of a trick question (really) is writing "Green" in red ink and asking "what color is this." The automatic pilot response is to read the word, note it is a color and say "green."

Now this is not lizard behavior.

I'd describe the human brain more as a chimpanzee brain with a pre-frontal cortex added then as basal ganglia plus a pre-frontal cortex and a hippocampus (leaving lots of empty space in the skull).

A wonderful example of the power of distraction is based on having people remember a few numbers. The human limit is 7. I swear if people are told 8 or 9 digit numbers and asked again in 5 minutes they make mistakes (this is a limit on short term memory, something we keep for more than a few seconds but acquire quickly on the first try).

If people are given say 4 digits to remember, they have some ability to do something else. With 7 digits they are fully occupied and the rest of their behavior is automatic pilot.

The wonderful wonderful experiment is to take oveerweight people, tell them a number, ask them to go to another room and that they will be asked the number in 5 minutes. The point is that there is junk food in the other room. People can remember say 4 digits and not nibble, people remembering 7 digits eat more. Brain occupied, no spare capacity to control nibbling.

But I heard all this from an economist who would be even less expert than a molecular physiologist.
see http://tinyurl.com/be2mxy

I've reported on one such death here in Texas. Not fun.

And, how punitive do you get legally, when it's a parent who's done this?

Pick the problem up from the other end: why do cars get that hot? I've often wondered why there can't be a small vent near the ceiling of cars that is shielded from the weather and break-ins but would provide enough air movement that cars would not get that hot.

Or - why are car windows not equipped with low-e glass to keep them from radiating heat through the windows.

Even a partial fix - one that lowered top temp by 20 degrees or made it take longer for a car to heat up would help.

This is a fix everyone would benefit from not just those with kids. And pets die in cars as well.

For what it's worth, this kind of thing happens far more often with pets than it does with children, and a major reason it does is simply that people don't think about how quickly the inside of a car can heat up, even on a cloudy day.

A car is basically a metal box; it absorbs heat very quickly, and when parked in a lot is standing on a surface that also absorbs heat quickly. Combine the fact that few people have much experience sitting in a car with the engine off at midday for more than a couple of minutes with the fact that many people are prone to underestimate the amount of time it takes them to do anything -- shop for groceries, go to the bank, get their hair done -- and you are practically guaranteed to have a fair number of dogs and a handful of kids die in parked cars every year.

I'm not sold on a technological fix here, but more extensive public education might help. I suppose it's possible for the odd person to just forget what he's left in his car, but it's more common for people to just not get how quickly a parked car can become an oven.

Also, Mr. Diamond's description of the human brain is yet another refutation of ID and creationism.

The whole article is really worth reading in its entirety, regardless of whether not people are parents or even want to be.

The writer focused on a particular subset of parents-- they were all parents who truly "forgot" their kids were in the backseat, there was nothing intentional about it, in fact it was as though their own brains/memories betrayed them. It's the most heartbreaking sort of "accident" that one can imagine.

The article focuses on cars, however, children can die or be greviously harmed from all sorts of combinations of stress + sleep deprivation + distraction. It seems so impossible to imagine until you realize how much of your average day is on autopilot-- commuting to work, etc.-- and how truly fallible memory can be.

Thanks, hilzoy.

I appreciate the slice of the article you have here. I won't be reading the article because, like Hilzoy, I have an active imagination and I know I won't sleep for days, imagining a child slowly dying in a hot car. I can't even watch horror movie commercials I am so sensitive.

That doesn't mean I don't know these things happen. Waldmann has a lot to say about the brain but it doesn't answer, for me, why a parent would forget their child in the car. I am not demonizing those people. I think understanding the cause will more likely offer a path to a solution.

The other day I thought I lost my keys (in my car, of all places) but it ends up they were in my closet on a chair. I was looking for my phone headset, put down the keys and never picked them up when I left the room. I was still thinking about where the headset was. When I went to look for them, I couldn't find them because I didn't remember that I put them down (autopilot).

People who leave their child in a car for hours aren't simply out running errands. They really think their child is in a safe place.

I can't imagine living through that horror.

And those who don't want the auto-industry involved, I appreciate that you are thinking of different ways to solve the problem rather than simply complaining.

The easy solution is a seatbelt sensor. It is keyed to the same sensor array that tells you about keys left in the ignition or lights left on--in this case, you must buckle a child up in the rear of the car. A seatbelt still buckled will cause the alarm.

What I wonder about is the people who campaigned for kids-in-the-backseat rule. If the child is small enough for a back-to-front carseat, why not put him in the front seat? The airbag can't hurt him through the kiddie seat. The risk of both kinds of death are so low, it's quite likely the unintended consequence of these rules was to
(1) increase infant/toddler deaths. ( (2) turn those deaths from instant "accidental" kills to these horrific cases.

Sensors my ass ...

In the first place, this happens very infrequently.

Secondly, take some god damn responsibility. It's a kid. How can you forget that your kid is in the car? Or not pay attention to the weather? Oh, I know, because you're the typical American driver; you've got little to no concept of the dangers involved in what you're doing, and when those dangers do pop up and you get bit because you weren't paying attention ... well, clearly it was the CARS fault.

To me, this is all just part and parcel of a bunch of under-educated morons that want, pardon me, EXPECT their cars to be perfect and never do anything that will cause them harm, no matter what the driver does or the physics involved.

Driving a top heavy SUV and paying more attention to the kids screaming in the back then what's going on in front of you and then you have to suddenly swerve?

Hey, don't blame that roll-over on you driving like a complete moron. Sue the manufacturers! Clearly it was "their fault".

And what's the industry response? Stability control.

And what does that engender? More people who shouldn't be driving in the first place saying idiotic crap like, "My SUV's safe! It's big and now it has stability control! So I don't have to worry about rolling it."

Putting sensors to check for kids left in the back seat is just too fricking stupid to contemplate.

You are driving the car. Not anyone else. YOU! Take responsibility for it and what you do with it.

You're too much of a chowder-head to remember to get Jr. out of the back seat?

Hell, if you're THAT stupid, you shouldn't be driving in the first place, and I'd give serious thought to having any more kids while you're at it.

Seriously, how many kids die like this in Germany or Japan or Italy or other places where people have a little bit more of an understanding of what a car is and how it works and how you fit into the whole system?

If you think that

a - this is a problem, and

b - cars should have sensors to help prevent it

Take a bus. Take a taxi. Just take your ass off of the road. You're too goddamn dumb to be driving and you're just screwing it up for those of us that do.

Why do you wonder about that p mac?

The back seat, or in the center of the vehicle is the safest place to be in the event of an accident.

It all comes down to crush space.

"The airbag can't hurt him through the kiddie seat."

It can't?

You don't know much about accident physics then.

What happens in the case of a rearward facing child seat getting hit by a deploying airbag is that the seat, with the kid in it, is forced into the seat back with explosive force.

They're usually killed by blunt force trauma to the skull, basal skull fracture or simply braking the kids neck like a twig.

Not putting the kid in the back?

Sweet Jesus, tell people don't really think like this about safety issues.

TB, it's very good to know that you're so perfect. Aren't you really a computer since you don't have any of the components of a human brain?

You're too much of a chowder-head to remember to get Jr. out of the back seat?

You really didn't read the article, did you? You might want to stow that knee-jerk judgment for a few minutes while you do.

Yeah, and I remember the seat-belt sensor on my 1973 Chevy Nova, the first year that had it. The alarm had been torn out at some point and shoved at the bottom of the glove compartment.

Why? Well, because the moment the seat belt was not clipped and any weight was applied to the seat and the car was in drive, the alarm would go off. Incessantly. Put a of milk on the seat? Alarm. Pile of books? Box? Bag of groceries? Alarm! Take a corner or bump too hard? ALARM.

Now the alarms are such that they shut off after a short bit, so people don't even realize they're there anymore.

This device would do nothing for the car or for child safety, that's all, just another annoying alarm people would ignore.

Just think what's more likely to be in the back seat... Groceries, or a defenseless child? It certainly isn't the child.

Now, I could see a design of child safety-seats that plugged into the car... If that were available, you could have safety-seats turn off airbags or turn on an alarm if the child was present but the seat not clipped or the child present and the car key not... Of course, who wants to be struggling to put in or out a child and have an alarm go off?

Maybe a better way would be to make sure people weren't tired, overworked, and more likely to forget such things.

What the hell is that supposed to mean WTF?

Have you set the standards on perfection as "Didn't leave kid in car"?

If that's where the bar is now set, pretty soon you'll only be able to by plastic scissors with rounded tips.

Try not to be so aggressively moronic.

I squinted all the way through that article earlier today. It's heart rending particularly because, as amazing as it seems, I see how it could happen. I see how that mistake is made. I think, on some level, most of us must. Certainly, the way these cases are treated in court, there must be a certain accessible degree of empathy there.

And, like you, I have a vivid imagination as to how the parent must feel. The part where they recount the recording of the military mom's screaming in the background of the 911 call... well. Let's just say it was a good thing for the author that that was near the end. I almost couldn't go on passed that.

You're too much of a chowder-head to remember to get Jr. out of the back seat?

Hell, if you're THAT stupid, you shouldn't be driving in the first place, and I'd give serious thought to having any more kids while you're at it.

It's kind of a tribute to this community that it got almost to forty comments before this asshole appeared.

Edit to fix HTML error:

You're too much of a chowder-head to remember to get Jr. out of the back seat?

Hell, if you're THAT stupid, you shouldn't be driving in the first place, and I'd give serious thought to having any more kids while you're at it.

It's kind of a tribute to this community that it got almost to forty comments before this asshole appeared.

One technology fix you could probably institute right now for only a couple hundred dollars and no burden on anyone without kids.

GPS. My wrist GPS can alert me when I go too fast, too slow, make a wrong turn, am coming up on the right turn, my heart rate is too fast or slow etc. I bring it home, plug it in and it instantly works with google maps to tell me all the places I went and this little thing only cost $200. I don’t think it would be that hard to interface your car gps with your cell phone to tell you if you didn’t go someplace you programmed the night before. And most cars being sold these days probably already have the hardware built in for this.

Wow: the second time since I started writing blogs that someone has called me "undereducated" -- the all-time least plausible criticism to make of me. The first time it happened I was grinning for a week.

Yeah dob, I DID read the whole article, and I just went and read it again to make sure. Want a synopsis?

15 - 25 people a year screw up and leave their kids in the car and kill them.

Period. End of story. Hell, it's even in the sub-head:

"Forgetting a child in the back seat of a hot, parked car is a horrifying, inexcusable mistake. But is it a crime?"

That's not an engineering problem or legislative problem, that a usage problem.

Hell, it barely even counts as a problem in the first place.

I'm sorry that some people just can't seem to pay attention or are too tired or fill their lives up with too much crap.

If you get in a hurry around machines you basically take for granted and don't fully understand, shit like this will happen.

Now dob, what was that you were saying about knowing the subject at hand?

hilzoy, thanks so much for another thoughtful, educational post.

and thanks for filling the public information vacuum.

Oh that's a witty rejoinder Arachnae.

Boy, such facile argumentation like that sure put me in my place.

[I don't think Arachnae was talking to you. I believe that comment was directed to the person who posted the vile vitriol I unpublished within two minutes, but not before it was seen and responded to. --Mod]

TB-

No amount of angry, judgemental comments cover up the fact that you are quite likely completely insufferable IRL.

The whole point of the article is that it DOESN'T happen very often but that it is the sort of thing that CAN happen to anyone because people aren't robots and our memories aren't nearly as reliable as we think they are. It's also a pretty interesting commentary about the hazards of judging others while pretending that your life couldn't be completely turned upside down tomorrow because you're distracted, stressed or overwhelmed and not concentrating on what you're doing. Car accidents can happen for this reason. So do random accidents-- slipping and falling, not paying attention when crossing the street, etc. As adults we become so conditioned to ignoring the regular, ordinary dangers that we face every day.

Frankly, it's a pretty interesting issue to think about right now considering that many people's stress levels are through the roof with the way that things are at the moment. It's too awful to imagine but easy to imagine how it could happen at the same time.

TB - I wasn't talking to you.

Sorry zoe kentucky, but I don't suffer fools gladly, and I especially don't suffer them when it comes to things like auto safety.

You said it yourself:

" ... you're distracted, stressed or overwhelmed and not concentrating on what you're doing."

Damn it, take your time and pay attention.

If you can't do that, then you shouldn't be doing it.

A lot of the comments here only confirm what is readily apparent to anyone that deals with transportation issues professionally:

Most people are blissfully ignorant of what they are doing and the consequences of their actions.

What, you were just quoting me by mistake Arachnae?

TB, I will give you credit for your second post, but your first was a tad over the top.

… take some god damn responsibility.

I learned to drive using vehicles that were essentially seatbeltless and had dashboards that were mostly metallic. The steering wheels were hard enough to drive nails and there were no head restraints.

Never was in an accident in one of those cars – luck, fewer drivers, country roads.

However TB, that does not mean, that I am not very happy that all of those quaint features on those now classic cars have been changed.

If a relatively simple fix, can save lives lets do it. Its what we do for our family, our friends, and our community.

Your more recent post just seem unnecessarily petulant.

No Keith G, it's not that easy of a fix. As Crissa mentioned above:

"Why? Well, because the moment the seat belt was not clipped and any weight was applied to the seat and the car was in drive, the alarm would go off. Incessantly. Put a of milk on the seat? Alarm. Pile of books? Box? Bag of groceries? Alarm! Take a corner or bump too hard? ALARM.

Now the alarms are such that they shut off after a short bit, so people don't even realize they're there anymore.

This device would do nothing for the car or for child safety, that's all, just another annoying alarm people would ignore.

Just think what's more likely to be in the back seat... Groceries, or a defenseless child? It certainly isn't the child."

And more to the point, it's an unnecessary fix. Sort of along the lines of putting an emergency release inside trunk on a Lotus Elise. Which are required by law, because, you know, someone might get stuck inside of a trunk the size of a lunch box.

It's worse than that: " ... just another annoying alarm people would ignore." and just another "safety" feature that will make people more complacent about what their role as a responsible driver is.

Gee TB, I am sure we can come up with something – that’s half the fun.

I bought a car in ’88 that had a manual disable switch for the rear door latches – a simple fix for a problem I never had. It never affected me. Well, once…long story.

The ultimate solution, less than a decade away, will have the automobile calling the designated ph # saying that there is a problem with one of the preset parameters.

TB, feel free to ignore that call.

Angry Internet man is angry. News at 11. The human beings in the thread aren't actually required to respond to the guy, you know.

I know John t, I know. But it's late, I am wide awake and slowly sipping a bit of single malt, so its all good.

Northzax@10:01: Did not know that. The subway piece was a classic. Glad to hear Weingarten got what he deserved. Thanks.

Reluctantly, I have to agree with TB when it comes to the alarm. This event is just too rare and the possibility of false alarms is just too large.

However, this does not mean I agree with his self-rightious condemnations of the parents. It's a comforting line of reasoning. By blaming those 'chowderheads' as too stupid to live or drive or whatever, one doesn't have to confront the uncomfortable possitility that something as terrible could happen to us. But reading Weingarten's article makes it all too clear that these parents are just ordinary people. Maybe they had a frazzled day. Which parent never has frazzled days?

I think the right thing to do, the humane thing to do (and dare I say the liberal thing to do) is to acknowledge the fact that it could happen to us all. These parents have suffered enough.

I'm with battlepanda.

A car-only solution will not solve the problem. Even in the article a motion sensor was ignored because the guy couldn't see the kid from outside. I've tripped the motion sensor in a car more than once, waiting for a friend to finish their errands and the auto-lock set the alarm when they left the car with the keys (why I couldn't turn the damn thing off from inside is another question altogether).

If there's to be a solution, it'll involve carseats or a standard plug for carseats or some combination of GPD and cel phones and car seats. And it'll happen through lawmaking, because no one thinks they'll be the one for it to happen to.

I've driven hundreds of thousands of miles in my life, and I know that it's easy to become complacent about many things which ought to be checked. I'm also willing to admit I still lock my keys in the car at least once every eighteen months or have to pull off because I'm about to panic or fall asleep at the wheel.

The best solution, as I said earlier, is to make sure parents aren't overworked or overstressed. There's no reason there shouldn't be someone responsible for a child at all hours... And the handoff shouldn't occur via a sleepy driver.

I realize this article struck at the hearts of parents everywhere. I don't have kids yet, so it didn't hit me as hard...

But this happens 25 times a year.

You're (much) more likely to be stung by lightning. If we're going to worry about social problems, can we set some lower bound on the number of people they have to affect. Say 1 / 1 million?

"If you could look yourself in the mirror"

Speaking of mirrors, couldn't they just stick an extra mirror on the dashboard or something, tilted toward the back seat? Though there's no guarantee the driver would look at it.

A couple of thoughts related to cars and safety:
There are many reasons that we die or are injured in car accidents, the most obvious being it's inherently dangerous and we do it so often that the danger is forgotten. Being in a self-piloted car around other cars, trucks, and fixed objects at relative speeds over 100 mph just isn't safe, period.
It's a statistical game: the best that can be done is to reduce the odds of the most common faults, such as seat belts and air bags reducing the second collision inside the car.
We as consumers reward the automakers when they sell us cars that make us feel good, as opposed to actually safer. A large SUV is inherently unsafe, both from it's physics (tall and narrow and heavy on top), and from its affect on the driver, who thinks that they are safer riding up high in a heavy, big vehicle.
Personally, I don't want to be crippled in a car accident, but I may not have much control over that because of the choices made by others, and we all need to depend on the inherent stability and safety of the other vehicles. Well, good luck with that when you're at eye level with the bumper of an Expedition.
To speak to the point of Hilzoy's article, IMHO a technological fix will reduce the statistics of leaving a kid behind in a closed car. A good thing, and should be mandated if it isn't cost prohibitive.
But... there are likely other, more significant safety issues, and it may be that this particular one has to take a back seat to the higher statistical incidence of, say, roll-overs and crushed roofs.
While it makes us feel better to assume the other guy is a fool, it doesn't make us safer. George Carlin used to do a bit about how the only guy dumber than the slow fool he was following was the guy in back of him that was tailgating. If you've never seen yourself in that comment then...

1) Adam, do you have a number on how many children, say 2 and under, there are in the US? If you pull out the ones whose parents don't have cars, you may well have hit your criteria.

That stat also doesn't count the cases where children are found/saved before they die. We don't hear about the cases where the call from the sitter or the baby making noise alerts the parent.

2) I love the suggestions that no one do anything while they are stressed or tired or distracted (judged by...). "Sorry, can't get in to work today, the baby woke me up twice last night, so I'm too stressed to come in." We'd need a good couple of years of parental leave.

I did know a mom who had a couple of small accidents (scraped a mirror on her car, etc.) and decided to never drive on days she'd not gotten enough sleep. Obviously though, you have to be of a certain income level/family structure/job parameters to be able to make that decision.

3) Also wanted to stress that these aren't parents leaving kids (or pets) in cars -- we're only talking about the ones who forget a kid is in the car.

Several times when mine were little and I went out without them (they were home with dad or grandma), I nearly gave myself a heart attack by looking in the rear view mirror and not seeing them. I *knew* that they were at home, but the sight of the empty seat still scared me to death. I can certainly see how this happens and am just thankful that mine are all old enough now to get themselves out of a car (or drive one...)

Robert Waldmann's comments on gender expectations...

I got exactly the same feeling upon learning digby was a woman.

I agree with the cost/benefit arguments against a technological fix for this, but am also sympathetic to Hilzoy's observation that these events are a particular horror. My wife and I have always believed that this could conceivably happen to either of us, under exactly the kind of circumstances discussed -- distraction and a deviation from routine. And as a parent, it is hard to imagine anything worse.

So how about asking the neuropsychologists to design a behavioral solution for this? There are lots of routine behavioral preventatives for similar risks. For example, we are taught to put our babies to sleep on their backs, to keep choking hazards away from them, to lock up cleaning chemicals, etc. Maybe we should all add to our habitual behavioral routine a 1-second check, on getting out of the car, that no living creatures are still inside it? Then when we fall back on habit, habit will save us.

I feel for all the people in that story, but the description of Balfour on the morning her child was killed made me want to scream. Multitasking, and distractedly talking on her cellphone all the way to work? She's lucky she didn't kill anyone else that day as well. And then, even though she's obviously over her head with one child, she's on her way to the fertility clinic?!?

And when the reporter meets her again, even after what has happened, she's still "multitasking" and pregnant again?

I do not think she should have been criminally prosecuted, and she has to live with what she did for the rest of her life. But she clearly learned nothing from her experience.

The dad who's car alarm kept going off lives here. He doesn't usually take his children to school, but his wife, a teacher, had to be in early for a pre-school work session. Getting the kids to school was not part of his morning routine, and he missed the little guy in the back seat. It is terrible for this family and for the others. This isn't to make excuses, just to give a little more information than the story supplied.

With that said, I can totally see how it happens. My husband and I are vigilant about our kids, in this way and others, so hopefully we never have to deal with what must be the most horrifying thing a parent could ever face.

But I have definitely had to take my kids to school when I not 100%. That's life. For those of you who always have a good night's sleep and never get thrown a curve ball, I'm sure you can rest easy knowing that you'll never screw up.

For flawed humans, like myself, I don't think adding an internal motion sensor (with a different alarm) is too much to ask. If it saves one kid, it's worth it (25 times a year may be less than deaths by lightning, but it's 25 times too many). Oh, and for the poster who mentioned cold weather, one of the children did freeze to death, so colder climes don't get you off the hook.

We travel with our dog sometimes, who tends to snoooze the minute he hits the backseat. Aware of the horror stories of people who'd left their dogs in the car, I bought two big keychains, like the kind offices have for their restrooms, and wrote on on each one, "Dog in the Back." Then I affixed an extra set of car keys to each one. These are the keys my husband and I use when the we take the dog with us.

AdaM: 1:1,000,000 is the standard for risk assessment action already when dealing with things like carcinogens.

yes, this is a horrific thing to happen, and yes, there may be a technological fix available, but I would argue that fix should be involved in child seats, not in the car itself. but even then I am at a bit of a loss in how to make it work. perhaps some combination of a child locator/gps/heat sensor? hek, just have an alarm go off somewhere, even if it's through something like Onstar. a satellite linkage, where the company calls you and says "hey, your child seat sensor is going off" or even summons a police response. false alarms would certainly occur, but it wouldn't take too much time for a police response in most of the country, just to peek in the window and make sure it's a bag of groceries or something.

and Eric: can you imagine what the Miami Herald must have been like back in the day, with Gene and Dave Barry as staff writers?

Wow, that was tough, but a very compelling read. Thank You

I'm totally okay with more family leave. (although there are questions of how to do it properly)

I'd also promote more help for families with young children. Both parents working and yet not being able to afford a nanny for a child under two seems almost criminal. And not on the part of the parents!