Thursday, May 7, 2009

A Need for a Safety Device

[Please be warned that some readers found the article I linked below very difficult to read.]

Here is one of the most heart-wrenching articles I've read in a long time. Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post wrote about the prosecution of parents who inadvertently left their babies in the backseat of the car. There was a story about it in our local paper a couple of years ago when a father from Benicia, who had changed his routine that morning, completely forgot about the sleeping baby in the backseat as he went into work. In that case, the DA chose not to prosecute, thank goodness, saying that the father was obviously distraught and that it was a devastating mistake. My heart goes out to these parents. Even as you pray that something like that won't happen to you, I can see how it can. Not all actions are a matter of will. Sometimes, it's a matter of how the brain functions. Instead of spending so much effort prosecuting these tormented parents, maybe the energy can be spent on implementing a safety device in the baby seats to protect both the babies and the parents.

11 comments:

  1. I read this too. It's horrific but so worth reading. At the same time, it warrants a warning to the faint of heart. There were a lot of people writing in to say they couldn't even finish the article. Good time for you to post a link, with the weather getting warmer.

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  2. A very haunting article. Worth reading; even worth the nausea and tears that accompanied its reading for me.

    This bit jumped out to me: "Humans, Hickling said, have a fundamental need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible. In hyperthermia cases, he believes, the parents are demonized for much the same reasons. "We are vulnerable, but we don't want to be reminded of that. We want to believe that the world is understandable and controllable and unthreatening, that if we follow the rules, we'll be okay. So, when this kind of thing happens to other people, we need to put them in a different category from us. We don't want to resemble them, and the fact that we might is too terrifying to deal with. So, they have to be monsters." Applicable in situations far afield from this one.

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  3. What an article. My husband says he kept double/triple checking his car after the Benicia man's story. Luckily, I pick up the kid, so I didn't have to worry... but man, what a tragic tragic mistake to make.

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  4. I feel sick. I'm sorry I read it. It was horrific. I couldn't get to sleep last night. At times, I sobbed aloud uncontrollably. I'm still haunted by it today. It's not like I never heard of these deaths, but it was always a distant headline, tragic, sad, and something I could shudder at the thought of. Something I could mentally turn away from. Something with which I didn't want to have any familiarity, didn't want to know the details. Something I didn't blame the caregivers for, just felt overwhelming sadness for them. I am sorry I read this article. I am waiting for the horror of the details to fade from my mind. It will take days, maybe weeks. And what can I say to my family? To my daughter, who came in for a drink of water last night and found her mother sobbing, gasping at the ceiling, trying to process the anguish of the parents, the physical torment of the children as they slowly bake to death? Shinyung, please put more of a warning on this post.

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  5. Oh, gudnuff, I'm so sorry. I'll put a warning right now.

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  6. Oh no, I just read this post. I had meant to tell you that this article was really heartwrenching. Not that you shouldn't read it, just that you should be forewarned. I still haven't quite shaken off the images from that article.

    Neeter

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  7. There is a device to help prevent thsee accidents. It is a clip that replaces the top clip on the 5 point harness seat belt in the car seat. There is an associated fob that goes on the parent's key chain. If the fob is "too far" away from the car (several feet?) and the seat belt is still latched, an alarm goes off. My mother got me one for my child. I'll try to find the link to the product. It was created by a family who suffered the tradegy of leaving a child in the car.

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  8. Anonymous at 8:17 -- yes, please send us the link or the name of the brand. We'd love to get one!

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  9. This is Anonymous from 8:17. I can't find the exact product my Mom had given me (I passed it to a friend with a newborn), but here is one: http://www.babyalert.info/

    See the Smart Clip Safety Seat Monitor

    The one I had came with a smaller fob for the keychain.

    I'm happy to see this type of product gain some attention, but am surprised that it is not more well known and marketed.

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  10. I don't mean to be insensitive, though I might come off that way (and I often do, and I'm not sorry) - but this is an incredibly important issue, so shouldn't we responsible adults force ourselves to suck it up and read the whole article? WE OWE IT to the dead children and the scarred parents NOT to melt down into our own pools of reaction but to bear witness and make sure that this never happens under our control.

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  11. Hi, Anonymous at 5:57, thanks so much for the link! I'll definitely be ordering one.

    Anonymous at 7:29, I agree that we should be aware, but I think there are different ways of getting there. For example, I may want to be aware of issues regarding child molestation, but that doesn't mean I need to watch a video of something like that happening to become fully aware of the issue. The article is very descriptive, and I can see how it may be too much for someone. We all have different levels of sensitivity and tolerance, and if someone finds the article to be emotionally traumatic, I don't think she needs to force herself to read it -- and that doesn't mean she's burying her head in the sand. There are different ways to educate ourselves.

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