Meet the Evenflo Embrace DLX Infant Car Seat with SensorSafe. It’s a car seat that sounds an alarm when the ignition is switched off.
Because apparently a child is roasted to death in a hot car once a week or so.
I suppose I’m glad to see this product, because I’m sure it will save lives. I also remain appalled that the product is necessary, and I reject utterly the increasingly common refrain that “it could happen to anyone.” It could happen to anyone like leaving your infant alone in a bath could happen to anyone. Or, maybe allowing a high fever to climb out of control.
If you need this seat, you need a radical reexamination of how you’re living your life day to day. You’re doing it wrong.The act of leaving your child in the car should not be normalized at any level. It should not become just another one of those pesky little things we all have to deal with, sigh, you know how it is, whew, what say we get a bite?
I would support making it a felony to leave the very youngest children in the car alone for more than, say, 60 seconds. I’d support lifelong incarceration as a possible sentence for killing a child this way.
It’s not a package of steaks. It’s a person you chose to make exist, and one who is completely dependent on you. If there is an ongoing and legitimate threat of you forgetting this person in the car, then you may need more help than this seat can provide.
You might also like:
- Call me Caitlyn #CaitlynJenner
And I certainly will, should I ever meet her. Transgendered people cause me no particular heartburn…. - Best Buy supports Islamist terrorism
Apparently not content to navigate only an increasingly poor business model, Best Buy has decided to… - It is illegal to annoy me
The city of Brighton, Michigan has passed an ordinance making it illegal to annoy another person. No… - Review: Frontera Tomatillo Salsa
The quest for a more cost-effective alternative to Blair’s Jalapeno Death continues. I’ve mentioned … - Government-funded Good Thing!
Folks, let’s go over something real quick, OK? This… Person 1: “We should support government-funde…
I’ll disagree with you here. A lot of kids getting left in cars isn’t b/c parents are too lazy to get their kids out for what they assume will be a “quick trip into the gas station” or something like that. Many, if not most, of the accidents are very respectable parents slipping up one time because they’ve had a rare one time exception to their routine.
The easiest example is “Mom, who usually takes little Danny to day care, is car pooling with a coworker today because her car is in the shop. That means Dad is responsible for taking Danny to day care. Dad’s running late and there was a big wreck on the interstate, so Dad had to work out how to get around the wreck. In working out those logistics, he completely forget that part of his trip into work was dropping Danny off. As Dad hurries into work, he completely forgets about little Danny, who’s now quietly snoozing in the back seat”
I actually entered a small contest for designing a solution to this problem. My idea made it to a second round after being judged by a panel made up of lawyers, automotive folks, and people involved in a non-profit that tries to raise awareness and prevention for such a situation. One woman on the panel had lost a child by the very same type of circumstances in my story.
I will agree with you though, if it’s obvious that child was intentionally left in the car, it should be treated as something equivalent to murder. I just think those percentage of incidents where a child is left in the car on purpose is much lower than you think it is.
I never meant to suggest that I thought a lot of the incidents were intentional. I’m saying that forgetting under any circumstances is unacceptable. That’s a major f*ckup on Dad’s part that you describe, not a little “something that could happen to anyone.”
I understand there are circumstances under which it could become more likely. I’m saying that’s no excuse.