[AtomicClucker]

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.

[jr2]

Yikes.   Good read.  Sad, but good, and well worth it.

[The E]

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.

[watsisname]

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.

[Dragon]

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.

[Luis Dias]

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.

[Lorric]

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.

[Luis Dias]

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.

[The E]

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.

[Luis Dias]

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.

[Phantom Hoover]

The article... clearly explains that both of these are safety measures in case of a crash.

[The E]

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.

[Dragon]

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?

[The E]

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.

[redsniper]

Put a mirror on the seat.

[Dragon]

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.

[MP-Ryan]

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.

[Nuke]

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.

[Lorric]

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.

[Kolgena]

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.