In order to raise awareness and caution, I write about this at the beginning of the summer season — about the uniquely modern type of horrible tragedy that plagues society: the forgotten child in hot car syndrome.
Usually, once temperatures begin rising, the risk of this tragedy rises, too.
This horrible lapse — a parent forgetting a child in a hot car, who then dies at the parent’s hands alone — is a tragedy usually limited to hot weather. However, this past March, two months ago, it happened again.
A locked and sealed car heats up fast. The temperature of a child rises much more quickly than an adult’s. Sometimes, it can take a mere five minutes on a boiling day in July to lead to heat stroke, fatal heat stroke. Last March, it was a case of a child forgotten for five hours, I believe. The sweltering child succumbed to this excruciatingly painful death.
For the first time I took a look at the comments section of the article that reported this tragedy.
“No one can convince me these deaths are not intentional.” “There’s a special place in hell for this parent, a murderer.” “I’m not buying the ‘I forgot my baby plea.’” “Nobody leaves their child in a car by accident.”
These harsh comments garnered many thumbs up responses.
Actually, research has shown that, not only can this unthinkable lapse happen to anyone, but the belief it can’t happen to them is what, ironically, can lead to forgetting one’s child in the back seat of a hot car.
The common denominator in instances of this tragedy seems to be a change in routine. Almost always, this was the catalyst to the horrifying lapse.
We all think, “it can never happen to me.” Yet, what any parent or caregiver needs to re-program the minds to think: “It can happen to anyone, including me. Therefore, I must put precautions in place. I must be mindful of this.”
At first thought, this type of tragedy reeks of negligence. It brings a parent’s basic competence into question.
Before education, before anything else, parents’ number one responsibility to their children is to protect them. On an instinctual, primal level, this is built into nature. We see animals instinctively protect their young, even physically shielding them from harm. It’s programmed into us.
So how can this horrifying lapse happen to a good parent?
I first read about this in a Pulitzer winning feature titled, “Fatal Distraction,” by Gene Weingarten. I encourage you to read this startling and haunting brilliant piece of journalism. Unfortunately, since it was published, this tragedy seems to have grown in occurrence. I now find a website called Kids and Car Safety, with a section called “Child Stories: Hot Car.” Reading them is simply heartbreaking.
They seem to highlight the two common factors: 1. It can happen to anyone. 2. Change in routine.
Since I was a kid, laws have changed. Kids are no longer allowed in the front seat. Kids are strapped in. Car seats holding toddlers are in the back, too. And thank G-d for that.
But an unintended consequence of these improved safety laws, plus a casualty of the frenetic pace of our modern lives, is the danger of forgetting a quiet or sleepy child in the back of the car. We no longer travel in horse and buggy where such a tragedy would likely be impossible.
For the most part, these parents aren’t monstrous parents who want to kill their children. The life sentence they are consigned to live with after their beloved child died at their own hand, is so violently and explosively shattering to their psyche that sometimes they can’t go on.
At times, suicide has been a response.
For some, the flashbacks are too much to live with. The profound horror at the thought of “if only” I had done X, Y, Z, is tormenting to the point, sometimes, of disintegration. The guilt can be so all consuming that it kills the parent, too.
No punishment for this child endangerment can match the own psychic purgatory of the parent. Applying the charge “possible criminal homicide” to a parent in these agonizing circumstances pales in comparison to the haunted life the parent is sentenced to live. What can be more devastating?
Today, the topic of preventing this tragedy is thankfully discussed more and more. There is investment in developing technology to register occupant detection in a hot car.
Some auto makers have developed something called “cabin awareness.”
Other auto companies are developing radar systems that can detect tiny movements, such as the quiet breathing of a toddler.
Prevention of such a tragedy has even been addressed on a federal level. Since 1990, there have been over 1,100 hot car baby deaths. It is gut wrenching, on top of the primary loss, the baby’s death itself.
Please understand, unlike the many harshly judgmental comments I read, this epic tragedy is mostly committed unknowingly.
Please read up on this. Find a way that works for you to address the prevention of this possibility, known by various different names, such as: forgotten baby syndrome, or hot car death, or child vehicular heat stroke — and others names, too.
Remember: it can happen to anyone.
Remember: A change in routine is often the culprit.
Wishing a safe and joyous Spring and Summer to all the young families and all the young children.
© IJN 2025
