Cars are inherently dangerous for infants

http://news.msn.com/us/baby-dies-inside-car-parked-in-affluent-connecticut-town

It is totally foreseeable that 600 now going on 700 infants have died in hot cars after being left by negligent caretakers.   This is a design defect which needs to be addressed.  Rich and poor, smart and dumb, death in a vehicle for an infant is certain without safeguards which deal with this totally foreseeable risk to children.

2seaoat wrote:http://news.msn.com/us/baby-dies-inside-car-parked-in-affluent-connecticut-town

It is totally foreseeable that 600 now going on 700 infants have died in hot cars after being left by negligent caretakers.   This is a design defect which needs to be addressed.  Rich and poor, smart and dumb, death in a vehicle for an infant is certain without safeguards which deal with this totally foreseeable risk to children.

I think this is faulty logic. Your title might have also said "Paerents are inherently dangerous for infants". After all, the infants didn't get into the cars by themselves.

Cars are not inherently dangerous - i.e., they are not essentially or characteristically dangerous. Polluted air is a better example of something that is inherently dangerous - since the infants have to breath the polluted air.

Yes. I know I'm nit-picking.

To the point of your post - yes, there seems to be no distinction among parents (guardians) who leave children unattended in cars.

One answer is to raise the awareness of these (predictable) tragedies to the point that no one would ever think of leaving their child alone in a car. Sadly, this is not likely to occur.

Another solution is for the auto makers to design vehicles to prevent this from occurring. They did it for seatbelts.

colaguy wrote:To the point of your post - yes, there seems to be no distinction among parents (guardians) who leave children unattended in cars.  

One answer is to raise the awareness of these (predictable) tragedies to the point that no one would ever think of leaving their child alone in a car.  Sadly, this is not likely to occur.  

Another solution is for the auto makers to design vehicles to prevent this from occurring.  They did it for seatbelts.  

The recent events are also raising the awareness of the public....hopefully they will look for dangerous situations as they walk through parking lots.

Cars most certainly are inherently dangerous...to everyone. But there's absolutely no excuse to leave infants in the car. Take the child with you, even if you're only going in "for a minute". What errand could be more important than the safety of your child? A 12-year-old kid came up with a "rope" attached from the back of the seat to the front door handle...that would remind the parent as soon as they opened the door. (But that would entail someone who thought enough ahead to attach the rope to the door in the first place.)

If a light can blink and a beeper go off because a dumb asz did not put their seat belt on........why is there no concern on leaving an infant in a car unattended. There are solutions. Saying that people are stupid is entirely foreseeable, and putting an infant in ANY car in light of accident statistics requires the inherently dangerous vehicle to be made less dangerous.

I saw the aftermath of some dumb asz leaving a dog staked next to his tent at a campground in 90 plus degree weather while they went swimming and canoeing and left the dog in direct sunlight. The dog died a most horrible death. Should we deem tents dangerous. No. However, the pattern is clear and established. Children are dying in cars which are unattended. The car has become an integral part of modern life but it is inherently dangerous, and when you put a child in one, it is like putting a child in a microwave and putting the microwave in the back of my dump truck to slide around and bang the child up. We saw the risk and we addressed it with many mandated safety features in vehicles. It is time to either take kids out of microwaves, or implement failsafe measures which dramatically reduce the unattended deaths from heat to infants. Intentional acts are not foreseeable, nor preventable. They however, may be made more difficult with safeguards.