Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: MP-Ryan on July 09, 2013, 04:14:44 pm
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For those of you who also have children, this is a must read. For those who might one day have children, this is a must read. For anyone who has ever judged someone who left their child in a car and that child died, it is essential that you read this piece. It is 11 pages long and worth every second of your time.
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-03-08/news/36840402_1_courtroom-tissue-class-trip
We recently had a death here in Edmonton where a young girl climbed into an unlocked vehicle and died of hyperthermia, which led me onto this. As a parent, this article is terrifyingly close to home.
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Jesus ****ing Christ man, as a parent of three, I both already knew stories like these and I didn't need another one.
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It is 11 pages long and worth every second of your time.
You did not disappoint.
Oh and for those wondering about the seemingly strange topic title, it will become clear on the 7th page.
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It's a fascinating thing, death by hyperthermia
An excellent read
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A good read indeed.
I wonder, BTW, what is, in toto, safer. A front facing baby seat (with less protection in case of crash) or a rear facing one (increasing the risk of forgetting about the baby)?
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What's more likely to occur? A crash, or you being distracted?
That and, if someone crashes into via the side, the kid is screwed anyhow
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I'd say that this would never happen to me, but the people in this article would have said the same thing once too. And that terrifies me.
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I'd say that this would never happen to me, but the people in this article would have said the same thing once too. And that terrifies me.
That is precisely the same thought that went through my head.
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I'd say that this would never happen to me, but the people in this article would have said the same thing once too. And that terrifies me.
That is precisely the same thought that went through my head.
Then I guess you can invest in the safety measures mentioned in the article to make those fears go away.
Putting reminders of your child/rens existence around will also help counter that out of sight out of mind thing. Things such as the background on phones and computers being pictures of them.
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What's more likely to occur? A crash, or you being distracted?
That and, if someone crashes into via the side, the kid is screwed anyhow
Well, this article makes it clear that being distracted isn't such a rare occurrence as people would like to believe. Crashes, on the other hand, are not really that common, and in a normal, head-on crash, the kid being in the rear seat already provides decent protection, not to mention there are tons of safety features against that already. And in case of a side impact, seat orientation doesn't really matter, everyone in a car is pretty much screwed unless there's a really big height difference between the cars ("think sports coupe hitting a SUV" kind of difference). It would certainly be interesting to see how the actual numbers compare.
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can you win a darwin award if you have children, but then you kill them all?
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can you win a darwin award if you have children, but then you kill them all?
Only if you also kill yourself in the same act.
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This kind of thing is why I absolutely ****ing detest smug assholes who reflexively blame the misfortunes of others on 'their own stupidity'. Everybody makes these mistakes, and insulting people when they do and acting like you're above the failings of the human condition is an incredibly immature and self-important way to behave. (I'm tempted to name names here because the people who do this do not have the basic introspective ability to realise this applies to them, but that would be derailing things too far.)
E: "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.""
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What's more likely to occur? A crash, or you being distracted?
That and, if someone crashes into via the side, the kid is screwed anyhow
Well, this article makes it clear that being distracted isn't such a rare occurrence as people would like to believe. Crashes, on the other hand, are not really that common, and in a normal, head-on crash, the kid being in the rear seat already provides decent protection, not to mention there are tons of safety features against that already. And in case of a side impact, seat orientation doesn't really matter, everyone in a car is pretty much screwed unless there's a really big height difference between the cars ("think sports coupe hitting a SUV" kind of difference). It would certainly be interesting to see how the actual numbers compare.
I'm willing to bet that an order of magnitude more children are killed in car crashes than from hyperthermia; but that's not really the point. Car crashes are something we're... comfortable with, that fit into the narrative of life as we understand it. Forgetting about your child while they die of heatstroke? That's bizarre, and... well, the quote I put in my last post pretty much sums it up.
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I'd say that this would never happen to me, but the people in this article would have said the same thing once too. And that terrifies me.
I can accurately say this won't ever happen to me
Since I will avoid ever having responsibility with a child
And I don't drive
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Last year, she almost succeeded. The 2008 Cameron Gulbransen Kids' Transportation Safety Act -- which requires safety improvements in power windows and in rear visibility, and protections against a child accidentally setting a car in motion -- originally had a rear seat-sensor requirement, too. It never made the final bill; sponsors withdrew it, fearing they couldn't get it past a powerful auto manufacturers' lobby.
General Motors Kills Children.
Say that a few times and the bill would pass with no resistance.
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I can accurately say this won't ever happen to me
Since I will avoid ever having responsibility with a child
And I don't drive
Just wait until that day where your cousin/brother/sister/friend asks you to babysit their baby and you don't refuse because you own them a favor. And you leave it on you girlfriend's car and both of you forget about him.
You can't say it won't ever happen to you, there are simply too many ways for this to manifest itself. You should always look for ways to avoid it, not rejecting the chance of it happening.
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As the article pointed out, it's the people who say it will never happen to them who are more likely to have it happen. The ones who buy gizmos to prevent it are safer (although not safe cause of that swiss cheese effect).
I did like the ending of the article though. It does give me some faith in humanity to hear someone is willing to do that.
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Just wait until that day where your cousin/brother/sister/friend asks you to babysit their baby and you don't refuse because you own them a favor. And you leave it on you girlfriend's car and both of you forget about him.
You can't say it won't ever happen to you, there are simply too many ways for this to manifest itself. You should always look for ways to avoid it, not rejecting the chance of it happening.
Hahaha
Girlfriend
That's cute
That and, I don't have a driver's license hence "I don't drive" as it'd be illegal
As a sidenote: They would've had to save my life to earn the favour of my watching their kids
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i think what deathfun is trying to get at is that he has taken the responsible route and chosen not to breed. he knows full well that raising children is beyond his capacity. thats kinda why i restrain my screwing habbits to creating bastards for hookers to throw in dumpsters, instead of the dating->marriage route (the baby would end up in a dumpster anyway but thats because i always end up with crazy women). and frankly only an idiot would ask either me or deathfun to babysit, related or no.
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I'll just teach my kids to keep a crowbar on hand to break the glass in the vehicle and to kill any headcrabs hiding in the shade.
I never leave children unattended in vehicles, period. Call it paranoid, but as both an unwilling babysitter and an idiotic youth who actually rode in a trunk in badly misplaced bet in high school (suffocation is not fun), they can easily become pressure cookers in high heat, ice cubes in the snow. Same thing, don't leave pets unattended in vehicles as well. Except chihuahuas, punt'em over a fence please.
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Yikes. Good read. Sad, but good, and well worth it.
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I never leave children unattended in vehicles, period. Call it paranoid, but as both an unwilling babysitter and an idiotic youth who actually rode in a trunk in badly misplaced bet in high school (suffocation is not fun), they can easily become pressure cookers in high heat, ice cubes in the snow. Same thing, don't leave pets unattended in vehicles as well. Except chihuahuas, punt'em over a fence please.
But that's the thing, right? None of these people wanted to forget their kids in the car or something like that. All it took was just a perfect storm of coincidences and stress to make them lapse for a moment. Noone can really be safe from that, despite best intentions.
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Wow, it's been a long time since a news article literally moved me to tears... I feel absolutely horrible for those people. :(
Of course there are two kinds of people for which this happens: those who consciously decide to leave their children in their vehicle while they go do whatever (the fools). And those for which this memory failure mode happened, and they left the child in the car without even realizing it. The horrifying thought is that the latter can happen to almost anyone.
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I'm willing to bet that an order of magnitude more children are killed in car crashes than from hyperthermia;
You're probably right, but my question was different. Is the reduction in those deaths worth the increase in hyperthermia deaths? There should be numbers available for both, I wonder how they compare. The rear-facing seat is not a miracle crash safety device, in many accidents, the child would've died regardless of which way it was facing.
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I have no idea how it is possible to leave a kid behind inside a car all alone without anyone realising this fact, but that does not mean that I don't sympathize.
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I have no idea how it is possible to leave a kid behind inside a car all alone without anyone realising this fact, but that does not mean that I don't sympathize.
Think back to any time you've forgotten something important. Or someone you know has forgotten something important. Same mechanisms at work. You don't just forget the thing, you think you've done it.
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To clarify: I'm one of the most distracted people you'll probably talk to in years. It's so easy to forget stuff it's not even funny. However, this goes really beyond forgetfulness. You can't really forget you have a kid inside your car, unless you willingly leave it inside the car and then after some minutes you forget about it. That's the only way I can think of.
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Quoting the relevant portion of the article:
David Diamond is picking at his breakfast at a Washington hotel, trying to explain.
"Memory is a machine," he says, "and it is not flawless. Our conscious mind prioritizes things by importance, but on a cellular level, our memory does not. If you're capable of forgetting your cellphone, you are potentially capable of forgetting your child."
Diamond is a professor of molecular physiology at the University of South Florida and a consultant to the veterans hospital in Tampa. He's here for a national science conference to give a speech about his research, which involves the intersection of emotion, stress and memory. What he's found is that under some circumstances, the most sophisticated part of our thought-processing center can be held hostage to a competing memory system, a primitive portion of the brain that is -- by a design as old as the dinosaur's -- inattentive, pigheaded, nonanalytical, stupid.
Diamond is the memory expert with a lousy memory, the one who recently realized, while driving to the mall, that his infant granddaughter was asleep in the back of the car. He remembered only because his wife, sitting beside him, mentioned the baby. He understands what could have happened had he been alone with the child. Almost worse, he understands exactly why.
The human brain, he says, is a magnificent but jury-rigged device in which newer and more sophisticated structures sit atop a junk heap of prototype brains still used by lower species. At the top of the device are the smartest and most nimble parts: the prefrontal cortex, which thinks and analyzes, and the hippocampus, which makes and holds on to our immediate memories. At the bottom is the basal ganglia, nearly identical to the brains of lizards, controlling voluntary but barely conscious actions.
Diamond says that in situations involving familiar, routine motor skills, the human animal presses the basal ganglia into service as a sort of auxiliary autopilot. When our prefrontal cortex and hippocampus are planning our day on the way to work, the ignorant but efficient basal ganglia is operating the car; that's why you'll sometimes find yourself having driven from point A to point B without a clear recollection of the route you took, the turns you made or the scenery you saw.
Ordinarily, says Diamond, this delegation of duty "works beautifully, like a symphony. But sometimes, it turns into the '1812 Overture.' The cannons take over and overwhelm."
By experimentally exposing rats to the presence of cats, and then recording electrochemical changes in the rodents' brains, Diamond has found that stress -- either sudden or chronic -- can weaken the brain's higher-functioning centers, making them more susceptible to bullying from the basal ganglia. He's seen the same sort of thing play out in cases he's followed involving infant deaths in cars.
"The quality of prior parental care seems to be irrelevant," he said. "The important factors that keep showing up involve a combination of stress, emotion, lack of sleep and change in routine, where the basal ganglia is trying to do what it's supposed to do, and the conscious mind is too weakened to resist. What happens is that the memory circuits in a vulnerable hippocampus literally get overwritten, like with a computer program. Unless the memory circuit is rebooted -- such as if the child cries, or, you know, if the wife mentions the child in the back -- it can entirely disappear."
It's on pages 3 and 4.
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Now I understand better: americans have decided that kids should be in the rear seats (ok) faced backwards (wth) so if you are on the driver's position, you never really see your kid unless you really really want to. Yeah, I think that on that kind of scenario, I'd probably have some slip ups as well.
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The article... clearly explains that both of these are safety measures in case of a crash.
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Yes, but they're not universally implemented. I see insurers recommending that placement, but I also see lots of people not following that recommendation around here.
Also, one has to weigh the possibility of a crash against the possibility of fatal neglect; I should think that the latter is much higher using the recommended crash-safe position than anywhere else. It's clear to me that this is something where tech needs to step in to help, preferably by providing a warning similar to the "no seatbelts" warning that is standard on front seats by now.
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The rear-facing position is far from "crash-safe". It's slightly better, but this article really made me question if it's worth it. Yes, a crash is much more likely than fatal neglect, but the question is, exactly how much does the rear-facing seat reduce the likelihood of the crash injuring the child?
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No position in the car is entirely crash-safe (Unless your car is a tank). However, given that this is recommended by insurance companies, I have to assume that there's at least some significant amount of statistical truth in there.
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Put a mirror on the seat.
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No position in the car is entirely crash-safe (Unless your car is a tank). However, given that this is recommended by insurance companies, I have to assume that there's at least some significant amount of statistical truth in there.
It's established the reduction is there, because, among other things, human body is more resistant to "eyeballs in" acceleration and the seat protects the back better. In case of a crash, the gain certainly is here, I wasn't questioning that. What I am questioning is whether this method is, on average, safer, taking into account the deaths from hyperthermia (the risk of which is greatly increased with a rear-facing seat). The problem with measuring the latter is that seems to be rather poorly documented (this article is the first one I've seen that deals with the issue). I doubt this risk is included in insurance company calculations, especially that people usually have "no way this is gonna happen to me" attitude about this. I wonder what would happen if it was included in those statistics.
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No position in the car is entirely crash-safe (Unless your car is a tank). However, given that this is recommended by insurance companies, I have to assume that there's at least some significant amount of statistical truth in there.
It's more than an insurance recommendation - the United States and Canada have the strictest child-seat laws in the world AFAIK (my wife is a public health nurse who, among delivering babies and teaching new parents about babies, also teaches the proper use of car seats).
In Canada, children must be in an approved car seat for their weight and height with proper non-expired safety certification markings. The car seat must be installed according to manufacturers directions. That means, de facto, that children under 23 lbs and approximately 9 months old must remain in rear-facing seats. The car seat manufacturer requirements are what set the rules, but there is a stringent list of additions recommendations: children should only be moved to forwarding facing when three criteria are met: 22 lbs, 1 year of age, able to walk independently. Rumour has it those recommendations are actually set to become ever more stringent in both Canada and the US. Child seats also cannot be installed in the passenger seat - kids seats must be installed in the second (or third) row of seating in a vehicle. Part of this is because the front of the vehicle is disproportionately affected in accidents; part of this is because of the now-mandatory front and side-curtain airbags in most new vehicles. The back seat is even safer in side impacts - car seats have side-impact test ratings, and are actually designed to flip up and roll against the backseat, creating a cocoon for the child inside.
Anecdotal note: My wife and I were shocked when we went to the UK last fall at how lax the UK requirements were concerning child seats and their installation.
The result is that the US and Canada have among the best crash data in the world as far as infant survival of serious car accidents. The unintended consequences is that it becomes much easier to forget a young child in the car if the conditions are right.
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Yes, but they're not universally implemented. I see insurers recommending that placement, but I also see lots of people not following that recommendation around here.
Also, one has to weigh the possibility of a crash against the possibility of fatal neglect; I should think that the latter is much higher using the recommended crash-safe position than anywhere else. It's clear to me that this is something where tech needs to step in to help, preferably by providing a warning similar to the "no seatbelts" warning that is standard on front seats by now.
yea i can see back seat cameras. lots of cars come with rear-view camera screens nowadays. now you just add a motion sensing camera in the back seat. periodically show an image from the back seat on the display. the article hinted to weight sensors, but with the incredibly low cost of cameras nowadays it seems like a better option. and you can always market it as a useful feature. for watching young children, and with older children allow the parent to look at whats going on back there without having to turn around. and its probibly less expensive than yet another airbag system.
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Anecdotal note: My wife and I were shocked when we went to the UK last fall at how lax the UK requirements were concerning child seats and their installation.
Here in the UK, I'm just as surprised by the rest of your post.
EDIT: I've never in my life seen a rear-facing child seat.
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We just heard from our city's police twitter feed that it is highly recommended for you to smash a car window in the event that you suspect a child might have been left in a car and is at risk of dying of hyperthermia. It's not a perfect measure, but I'm glad they pointed out the obvious course of action, promising that no charges would be pursued if you broke into a car for the express purpose of saving a life. It also means that on hot, sunny days, it may be worth everyone's time to occasionally glance at the backseats of nearby parked vehicles.
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We just heard from our city's police twitter feed that it is highly recommended for you to smash a car window in the event that you suspect a child might have been left in a car and is at risk of dying of hyperthermia. It's not a perfect measure, but I'm glad they pointed out the obvious course of action, promising that no charges would be pursued if you broke into a car for the express purpose of saving a life. It also means that on hot, sunny days, it may be worth everyone's time to occasionally glance at the backseats of nearby parked vehicles.
On that note, the Res-Q-Me seatbelt cutter and window breaker (http://www.resqme.com) is a wonderful tool. I drive in remote areas and near water a lot, so I have one on each of my personal car key rings, and on all of our work vehicles. A colleague of mine is also a volunteer firefighter and has used his several times. Contrary to popular belief, smashing a vehicle window is actually quite difficult.
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The reasoning behind rear-facing car seats for very young children (or at least I'd assume as much) is that infants don't have well-developed neck muscles yet, plus their skulls are still rather soft. If the vehicle comes to a sudden stop while moving, which would be your most common accident scenario, the whiplash motion that would only leave an adult with a sore neck would do terrible things to an infant. With the rear-facing seat, the infant's head and neck are fully supported during the deceleration phase, which would greatly reduce the stresses placed on them.
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it's more than a little unnerving that nearly all of the cases mentioned in the article happened in my general area.
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Probably where the reporter is based more than anything else. Unless you've discovered a factor they failed to consider. :p
But yeah, it's always worrying when you see stories from the place you lived. Makes it more real.
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Hmm, you could tie in an internal carseat seatbelt sensor that sends a signal that causes a keyfob attachment to go off if the keyfob moves out of range of the seat without the all-clear (unbuckled) signal being sent. As well as a low-battery reminding chirp, like a fire alarm.
Practically, though, to reduce (can't eliminate, but it would reduce I think) the chance of leaving your child, make a habit of tossing something into the carseat after removing your child, something that you can carry on your person normally and is visible. Say, a bracelet with their name or something? Then if you get to work and see the bracelet on you, you know to go get your child.
IDK... I don't have to bring my child to the sitter on a regular basis so I have no pre-established habit, but if I did, and the "child delivered to caregiver" circuit was triggered while Jed was napping... :shudder:
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you could probibly do a better job with load cells, accelerometers, and temperature sensors (none of which are expensive), in addition to the latch sensor. then top it all off with an ems transmitter that can alert dispatchers if the seat is loaded, locked, and not moving at high temperature for an extended period of time. if the car has onstar or something like that it could interface with that as well. could even forward a message to your cell or email. this is one of those things that is trivial to fix with technology. and if you cant convince the auto manufacturers go after the car seat manufacturers.
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None of them are expensive, but they're not all necessarily reliable; and as the article points out, the manufacturers are potentially liable if their safety measures malfunction and a child is injured or killed.
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Know what's really reliable and extremely cheap?
Not having kids
Had to say it
If I didn't exist, I'm fairly certain my parents could have saved a profuse amount of money
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None of them are expensive, but they're not all necessarily reliable; and as the article points out, the manufacturers are potentially liable if their safety measures malfunction and a child is injured or killed.
I don't get this. If they're not liable now, they shouldn't be held liable for actually giving a damn and trying. Messed up world we live in. :disgust:
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An odd coincidence, but this (http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news%2Fnational_world&id=9169951) popped up on my Facebook feed today. It's an ingeniously simple idea; good on the kid.
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An odd coincidence, but this (http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news%2Fnational_world&id=9169951) popped up on my Facebook feed today. It's an ingeniously simple idea; good on the kid.
It would be as cheap as anything as well. No fancy electronic gizmos needed here.
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Just have to remember to reset it.