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Hot Cars - Latest News
OPINION: Toddler’s death in hot car calls for compassion, not outrage
There are no words. There are no words for the ache in every parent’s heart when they read a headline about a child dying in a hot car. There are no words for that deep, sinking feeling that hits you right in the gut when the thought jumps into your mind: What if it was my child? What if it was me?
Hot-car deaths can reflect a brain malfunction
"A horrific death like this strikes me not as criminally negligent parenting, but as an unusually tragic malfunction of the brain." She was 18 months old, the news stories tell us, the daughter of married parents in their mid-thirties. She perished on a warm April Monday afternoon in a Glendale apartment complex, shut inside the family’s four-door sedan. Left behind, the reporters explain. Forgotten by her family. Exposed to the car’s steadily rising heat “for at least a few hours,” according to Glendale police.
How do some parents leave their children behind in hot cars? It’s in the brain.
It’s a news story that conjures horror and disbelief: a child left behind in a hot car, sometimes with fatal consequences. How could any parent, any caregiver, commit such a grievous oversight? How could someone forget a child?
The answer is in the complex ways that the human brain works, according to a new study.
And its author – psychology professor David Diamond, who has studied the phenomenon for more than a decade and testified in court as an expert witness – is calling for manufacturer safeguards to avert other tragedies.
Hot car deaths: Study describes psychological and neural basis of how people make fatal errors
More than 50 children died in hot cars in 2018, making it the deadliest year on record. Many of the cases involve parents who unknowingly left a child behind, often for an entire day. University of South Florida Psychology Professor David Diamond has studied this phenomenon for over a decade and has served as an expert witness on many high-profile cases. In his latest publication, he describes the psychological and neural basis of how responsible people make such fatal errors.
Dangers of Hot Cars
Hot car tragedies are largely misunderstood by the general public. Most parents are misinformed and believe that they could never lose awareness of their child in the back seat. The reality is that this happens to the most loving, caring and protective parents. It has happened to a teacher, dentist, social worker, police officer, nurse, clergyman, soldier, and even a rocket scientist. It can happen to anyone…
