Over 50% of kids who die in cars were left there unknowingly. Forgetting your own child is easier than you may think
A Texas mother believed she’d gone through her normal routine on Wednesday: deliver her 5-year-old son to school, as always, before heading to work next door. At the end of the school day, she went to pick him up — only for the school to inform her he’d never arrived.
In a nightmare twist, he had died after spending hours in the back of her car as the temperature rose, still strapped into his seat. She had completely forgotten to drop him off.
San Antonio Police Chief William McManus called it an “extremely tragic situation.”
Since 1990, more than 1,100 children have lost their lives this way. Summer is peak season — so much so that two more children died while reporting this story. Since May, 15 children have died after being left in hot cars, according to Kids and Car Safety, a nonprofit focused on preventing vehicle dangers.
The majority of hot car deaths — 52 percent — result from someone simply forgetting their child in the vehicle, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The nonprofit found that figure to be even higher: 55 percent. Often caregivers believe they’d dropped them off already or fail to remember the kid was with them that day.
The tragedy may even be becoming more common. In 2009, about 15 to 25 hot car deaths happened each year, the Washington Post reported at the time. Last year it happened 37 times (that’s according to the federal government data, Kids and Car Safety recorded 41 incidents).
“I think the real problem that we have here is this misconception that ‘this would never happen to me,’” Amber Rollins-Reis, director of Kids and Car Safety, told The Independent.
Keys, wallet or phone are easily forgotten, but forgetting children seems unimaginable.
These memory lapses could be explained by a “clash between memory systems,” Dr. David Diamond, a neuroscientist and professor at the University of South Florida, told The Independent. There’s the habit memory system, which allows us to do routine things automatically, like driving to work. Then there’s the conscious memory system, which allows us to plan ahead.
These systems compete if a routine is disrupted. For example, if a parent, who normally drives straight to work, one day has to take their child to daycare before work, the systems start competing with one another, Diamond said. That’s when a child could be forgotten as the habit memory system often takes over.
Sometimes small cues, like a cry from the backseat or seeing a diaper, can be the difference between life and death. “I think that every parent on planet Earth has experienced that type of memory failure involving their child in a rear-facing car seat in the back seat of their car. But the difference is that something triggered them to remember they were back there and nothing happened,” Rollins-Reis said.
If a baby is asleep in a car seat, the parent’s memory may not be triggered, and they just go about their day. Perhaps that’s why 88 percent of children who have died in a hot car are age three and younger, according to the nonprofit. Parents of young children are often stressed and sleep deprived, conditions that make “it more likely you’ll do something out of habit,” Diamond said.
There’s another issue at play here, too: If someone thinks a situation is unlikely, they aren’t going to take measures to prevent it.
Caregivers can take steps to prevent potential tragedies. Experts recommended putting an object, like a stuffed animal, in the backseat of the car and putting it on their lap after buckling in the child — the stuffie serving as a visual reminder that a child is in the car.
