Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009) • Hacker News Board

Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)

#211

Post by comstock » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 3:08 PM UTC

m_mueller wrote: post #210

comstock wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, on further research it seems pretty clear that the mattress wrapping stuff is junk. Here's a decent study refuting it [1]. One key quote is "SIDS mortality has declined 63% from 1994 to 2004. The prevalence of plastic wrapped cot mattresses has remained constant since 1997. The decline in SIDS cannot be explained by changes in the proportion of plastic-wrapped mattresses." The promotion of "mattress wrapping" coi…

I'm aware of that one and I don't think it explains everything if you pay closr attention. They don't go further than taking a general population statistic and try to to infer from correlation that mattress wrapping is disproven. What happens if you actually have two groups, one using wrapping and one from the same demographics who don't? Sprott hypothesises that laying infants on their back will reduce SIDS thanks t…

Reference 2 of that paper [1] describes such a study:

"We conclude that not only is there no evidence from this study of any identifiable increase in the risk of SIDS associated with the use of mattresses with an integral PVC cover, but also that the use of such mattresses is associated with a lower risk..."

[1] http://moscow.sci-hub.cc/e537c543e3d261c8c9ecf5b144267b15/bl...

Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)

#212

Post by jliptzin » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 3:19 PM UTC

nervousvarun wrote: post #92

rocqua wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As horrible as this form of death is, it seems statistically unlikely. I'd wager that there are orders of magnitude between child deaths in cars due to heat and child deaths in cars due to crashes. As such, I don't think an app for this makes sense. I don't think this ranks when looking at the numbers. That said, this must be amongst the worst ways of losing a child, and that is saying something.

I think you're thinking of this from a purely "statistical scope of the problem" perspective and underestimating the value of "emotional commitment of a parent for their children". If there was an app (would require hardware...some sortof linkup with the child seat) I'd imagine if it was marketed right and there were studies supporting it's effectiveness you could charge an awful lot for it and virtually every parent…

Don't really need a fancy app with hardware...could just send the following text every hour on the hour from let's say 7am to 5pm:

Is your child in your car?

Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)

#213

Post by mikeash » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 3:57 PM UTC

ideonexus wrote: post #209

mikeash wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree about deterrence. There are a lot of shitty parents out there who fear prison more than they fear losing their child. There are even parents who want to kill their children. If it becomes common knowledge that you can get away with murdering your kid as long as you use this technique... I don't really want to think about that. People are also really bad about evaluating potential consequences. A person mig…

I find the callousness in this post extremely distressing. You don't understand what having a child under the age of six months is like. You are incredibly sleep deprived, making errors at work and are a danger on the road. My wife and I piled up a barricade of boxes to the door of our balcony because we were terrified that one of us would hallucinate at 4am and drop our newborn off the fourth floor. So when I read a…

I'm a father and I know exactly what it's like, but good job assuming.

I think you misunderstood the point I'm making. I'm not saying every single parent who leaves a child in a car is a bad parent. I'm saying that some are, and making it a crime will deter them. I'm also saying that it can deter even good parents.

Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)

#214

Post by URSpider94 » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:10 PM UTC

jliptzin wrote: post #212

nervousvarun wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're thinking of this from a purely "statistical scope of the problem" perspective and underestimating the value of "emotional commitment of a parent for their children". If there was an app (would require hardware...some sortof linkup with the child seat) I'd imagine if it was marketed right and there were studies supporting it's effectiveness you could charge an awful lot for it and virtually every parent…

Don't really need a fancy app with hardware...could just send the following text every hour on the hour from let's say 7am to 5pm: Is your child in your car?

The problem is, many of these parents think that they have dropped their child off at day care. Parents will either be constantly running out to their cars to check for their child, or will start ignoring these texts. It's basic human neurophysiology that we learn to mute meaningless data.

Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)

#215

Post by erikpukinskis » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:38 PM UTC

dheera wrote: post #164

u801e wrote: post #146

Since 1998, the number of children who died of heatstroke in vehicles has been around 30 to 50 a year [1]. Before that, the number was a bit lower (10 or less) [1]. Around that time, the NHTSA (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) mandate on new vehicles having passenger side airbags as standard equipment came into effect. To address the issue of children dying due to airbag deployments (which were designe…

We have keyless entry, lane departure warning, cruise control, and even autopilot. Can't we have a stupidly simple system that if a human is detected in the car and the temperature is over 37 degrees C: - 0. Call the car owner's phone or alert them through any communication app they use - 1. After 5 minutes, call the police Ether or both would save lives. It doesn't seem like a very difficult technical task to me.

There's an even simpler (if imperfect) solution:

Remind the driver to check the back seat if they opened one of the back doors before they got in the front seat.

Heck, most cars have seatbelt+weight sensors. Just give a warning if you detect anyone under 100 lbs in the back.

Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)

#216

Post by erikpukinskis » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:42 PM UTC

mikeash wrote: post #208

mcguire wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There are a lot of shitty parents out there who fear prison more than they fear losing their child. There are even parents who want to kill their children. If it becomes common knowledge that you can get away with murdering your kid as long as you use this technique... I don't really want to think about that." I believe we're going to need a citation on that. What exactly does "a lot" mean? 1% of the population of p…

Approximately 100,000 American children suffer physical abuse at the hands of a parent each year: http://www.nationalchildrensalliance.org/media-room/media-ki... If the proportion of abuse victims which are subject to physical parental abuse is approximately the same, then about 13,000 of those victims are under one year old. If you're going for an argument that really bad parents are too rare to take into account, i…

> Approximately 100,000 American children suffer physical abuse

> If you're going for an argument that really bad parents are too rare to take into account

You're moving the goalposts. The assertion wasn't that there are lots of bad parents out there, the assertion was that there are parents out there who are more afraid of jail than of killing their child.

Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)

#217

Post by erikpukinskis » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 4:45 PM UTC

turc1656 wrote: post #177

mcguire wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There are a lot of shitty parents out there who fear prison more than they fear losing their child. There are even parents who want to kill their children. If it becomes common knowledge that you can get away with murdering your kid as long as you use this technique... I don't really want to think about that." I believe we're going to need a citation on that. What exactly does "a lot" mean? 1% of the population of p…

Based on the definition you provided, it seems fairly obvious to me based on how I interpret that definition. "acting in a particular manner" = leaving the child in the car, that is the act. "foreseeable outcome" = death. "reasonable care to avoid consequences" = anything that the parent could easily do which would prevent the foreseeable outcome. There are a few things parents can do, and could even combine them. An…

> it's 100% accurate in prevention, so long as you work it into your routine when exiting a vehicle

Your fallacy, because you are apparently a person who is good at teaching themselves new routines based on safety statistics, is assuming that is a general skill that everyone has and that everyone could be expected to have.

If you're actually interested in preventing child deaths, and not just moralizing, the proper thing to do is treat this as a public health issue, and understand that not every parent has the same emotional and cognitive facilities as you do.

Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)

#218

Post by mikeash » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 5:23 PM UTC

erikpukinskis wrote: post #216

mikeash wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Approximately 100,000 American children suffer physical abuse at the hands of a parent each year: http://www.nationalchildrensalliance.org/media-room/media-ki... If the proportion of abuse victims which are subject to physical parental abuse is approximately the same, then about 13,000 of those victims are under one year old. If you're going for an argument that really bad parents are too rare to take into account, i…

> Approximately 100,000 American children suffer physical abuse > If you're going for an argument that really bad parents are too rare to take into account You're moving the goalposts. The assertion wasn't that there are lots of bad parents out there, the assertion was that there are parents out there who are more afraid of jail than of killing their child .

Fair enough. With nearly 2,000 American children a year dying of child abuse, I'm confident that it qualifies as "a lot."

Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)

#219

Post by cjbprime » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 5:50 PM UTC

m_mueller wrote: post #171

cjbprime wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks super quacky. US cot deaths have also massively declined, and the trajectory of the decline matches up with the uptake of back sleeping for infants. http://www.npr.org/2011/07/15/137859024/rethinking-sids-many...

1.) SIDS still occurs at a rate of around 0.5 in 1000 in the Western world [1]. To compare, the probability of death in a traffic related accident over an 80 year lifespan is 0.85 in 1000 in the US. So it's still far from negligible. 2.) Sprott has at least a hypothesis to explain the correlation between back sleeping and decline in SIDS. His skeptics on the other hand have no explanation for why there is no confirme…

Honest question re 2): are there current confirmed cases of SIDS for back sleeping babies with no foreign objects in their crib? The NPR article I linked mentions that the current 0.5 rate is considered to be due to ignorance/non-compliance with safe sleeping policy.

Re: Forgetting a Child in a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime? (2009)

#220

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jul 31, 2017, 6:00 PM UTC

lend000 wrote: post #174

dheera wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have keyless entry, lane departure warning, cruise control, and even autopilot. Can't we have a stupidly simple system that if a human is detected in the car and the temperature is over 37 degrees C: - 0. Call the car owner's phone or alert them through any communication app they use - 1. After 5 minutes, call the police Ether or both would save lives. It doesn't seem like a very difficult technical task to me.

I wouldn't trivialize the reliable detection of people, especially small children. I think we are just now getting at the point where that technology could be reliable, and from an automaker's perspective, it could be a similar level of investment as autopilot, and a much smaller benefit (more people would be saved by reliable autopilot, and it's also much more desirable to consumers). Even if they had such a technol…

> I wouldn't trivialize the reliable detection of people, especially small children.

A fairly simple weight sensor as used for passenger seat belt alarms would seem likely to work (it's a little more complicated because you need to zero it for the weight of the child seat.) You'll get false positives if you carry goods on that seat, but if you have an installed child seat you are unlikely to do that.

The notification aspect is probably harder to get right than the sensor. Though an internally audible alarm and warning light for a short period when turning off the car with a detected child would probably itself be a big help to prevent the initial problem rather than reacting to it the way “call the owner and then the police” mechanisms do, plus be far simpler to implement.