So glad to see those nice laws preventing children in front seats work so well. I wonder how many children were killed by inflating airbags.

Ah well. We all know the law is best....

CZ

I understand why you feel sad, and why you would want to talk about ways this tragic story could have had a happier ending.

I would just like to point out how incredibly unrealistic it is to think that any of the other commuters would spot a baby in a car, no matter how small the parking lot. I used to commute daily on BART, and I cannot recall one single instance where I actually noticed the interior of any of the cars in the parking lot, much less any actual people or items that may have been left in the car. Hell, I don't know if I would even notice the exterior of a car in a BART parking lot, and that's in plain sight, unless there were some seriously unusual features involved.

As discussed during the last post on the topic, people MUST place their purse/laptop/briefcase in the back seat next to the child.

And let's hear it for busybodies; if you see a child left unattended in a vehicle, obviously call 911.

Or raise holy hell, get the BART police to make an announcement, try to find the absent-minded parent, or just break the window yourself.

It's great to have emergency medical services and all, but if fatal overheating can happen that fast, then waiting around for the dispatcher to call the police so the police can call the EMTs is no kind of help at all.

We learn CPR so we aren't left as useless bystanders to a critical injury while we wait for the ambulance. But heaving a rock through the car window and saving a child's life doesn't even require training.

What a time to get all squeamish about property!

but I humbly suggest that day care providers make it a habit to call parents if a child doesn't come to daycare on a scheduled day.

As a white middle aged male, I would be arrested and branded a sex criminal or at best sued. I say let them all die.

I feel so sad for you.

Okay, to put it simply, most people - I daresay the majority of people - shouldn't bear children, because they are incapable of taking care of them. They don't know how, thanks to the incompetent American educational system they haven't learned how, and they don't have the intellectual curiosity to find out how.

I suggest that while pregnant, potential mothers and their fathers should be required to study a book about the care of children, from birth to, say, 12 years old. Everything medical, social, issues of health and safety, and all that. And they should be TESTED on what they have learned from these books. Tested as severely as the SAT's, in a room with proctors, no books and no talking.

If they cannot get a minimal passing grade, they should be forced to give up their child for adoption, assuming they wish to bring the child to term.

I have heard of too many shaken babies, babies made retarded or dead in hot cars, and other such horrors, for me to think that parenthood is the sweet-smelling smoke the world tries to blow up my rear end.

American Fascist

I would be arrested and branded a sex criminal

While I'm sure that's true, (and I don't even want to know what disgusting illegal pervert behavior you get up to) what does that have to do with this story?

In most of these deaths there has been a change in routine (which is sounds like was the case in this situation) and the parents (most of which are loving/caring good parents) forget. If you have ever driven somewhere and not realized how you got there this could happen to you. We are all so busy, over scheduled, stressed it just doesn't take much to forget.

I was driving home from the vet this past weekend and I was thinking about all the things I needed to get done on Sat. and forgot my dog was in the back seat until his cold nose on my arm schared the you know what out of me.

The vast, vast majority of people DO know that babies can die from being left in hot cars or from being shaken.

A test isn't going to prevent that, the first because the poor babies who die of heatstroke in their carseats were honestly FORGOTTEN by people who would NEVER intentionally leave a baby in a car, and the second because an SAT-style test isn't a good predictor of who will mentally snap and shake a baby that just won't quit crying. (Anecdotally, a fair number of shaken/beaten baby deaths, at least in New Orleans, seem to happen at the hands of the mother's boyfriend and not at the hands of either biological parent, rendering your test moot.)

I've been as busy and harrried as the next person, but I don't understand how you can FORGET to drop your child at daycare. Both my husband and I take our son to and from preschool and on numerous trips and errands. I actually look at my back seat when I am preoccupied and driving because I think I STILL have my son with me. It's the logical place for him to be. I feel terrible for the dad but he really deserves some blame. A baby suffocating in a hot car is completely avoidable.

Maybe this is an issue for a public serve announcement of some kind: Always check your rear car seat for the baby. Kind of like "click it or ticket."

That parking lot is regularly patrolled by security guards and police. And yet, nobody was paying attention. There are so many people that could have made a call about that infant, but nobody bothered to really look at what was going on in the cars.

I know the people who first arrived and found the mother screaming, administered CPR to the baby and called the ambulance. They are completely shaken and torn up about it wishing they could have gotten there sooner, but say that the baby was probably already long gone by the time they got there. They've not been reported on by the media at all, but I imagine that's because the parents aren't talking. All of us who know them have wanted to spare them from the media. But it's just terrible.

It's just terribly tragic. Every parent's nightmare.