@David Dyer-Bennet 184
I looked up a few studies to check, but they say the same thing - once it's over 45 degrees, you've hit the danger zone and windows being cracked doesn't make a significant enough difference to matter. Same with shades or having a lighter coloured car. It can rise to 45 degrees in under 10 minutes, regardless of windows being open or the aircon having been on (19 to 30 in the first minute). There isn't enough of a cooling effect to make any sort of actual difference (70 versus 78 is already too late). Same people doing the study rescued over a 1000 people and pets left in cars - accidentally and on purpose. Because it's the "I just had to duck back inside to grab my bag, but someone called and I did this but it can't get that hot can it?". They were still rescuing kids in the middle of the biggest heat wave my city has gotten - people are actually that stupid.
Windows completely down is probably different, same with sunroof. But if I'm not willing to go and sit in there, why the hell would I leave kids/dogs in there?
Cracked windows DO NOT HELP.
Children have died because their parent conscientiously cracked the window before taking off. Even more dogs have. This is an environmental killer, and when you've got 35 - 40 degree celcius days, a cracked window does not help. Christ, all the windows down may not help (babies don't regulate temperature like children or adults and can't do anything but cry, which won't help in an abandoned car park).
My mother checks cars and the only time i have ever ever seen her viciously angry was confronting a woman who left her little dog in the car at the shops. My mother saw the dog, reported it to the shop keepers who did an announcement. She sat and watched the dog for 15 minutes as it got progressively more anxious and upset and called the cops at 10 minutes, once it had stopped being anxious and was now shaking on the floor. After 20 minutes my mother went back in the store and told them she was going to break the window, and asked could they do another announcement? At which point the woman next to her threatened my mother because it was her car and she was only gone 5 minutes and how dare she be snooping! The little dog is fine! How dare she call the police! We honestly thought my mother was going to hit her. Turns out the woman had been in the shops, heard the call, but really needed to finish off her shopping - including cigarettes, which is where my mother met up with her.
Turns out the little dog was fine. Perception of time and heat are vastly different as an adult - how many times have you lost track of how long it took to drop in and get milk? Or been distracted? Or misjudged the temperature? How would you feel about sitting in that car for that long, with a window cracked and without water - to try and mimic the child response, pretend you're already sick as well.
Two or three times a year, in the capital cities, stories come out about kids killed in car because their parent left them there deliberately. Alarms won't help that. Community support will - from checking the backs of cars as you walk through to making sure there are support systems for working parents to helping addicted gamblers (like I said earlier, casinos now do patrols and have signs up everywhere about leaving kids or dogs in cars). A lot of that is going to help the accidental deaths too - if you've got more support, you are less likely to be suffering the stress/memory problems. Checking back seats when you walk through is going to help as well.
As an aside - I am very uncomfortable with the 'we shouldn't apply the law because they feel bad enough already'. Apart from the numerous abuse cases where 'oh he's suffered enough because of the bad publicity' has played a part (and don't forget those poor boys who might not get into the college they want!), do you really think drink drivers shouldn't be charged because it was their passenger instead of a stranger who died?
Just a note for people taking the 'but they've suffered enough' line - the laws exist because there are people who leave their children in the car deliberately. It isn't about punishing the mistaken and accidental, it's about punishing the people who took a bloody stupid risk (insert speeding, shooting into the air, flicking a cigarette butt out of the window in summer or any number of crimes) and someone else paid the price.
I admit I don't know statistics - I can probably look it up. But a quick scan of the news reports have a whole lot more 'kids left in car while parent gambled' than 'kids forgotten in car'. Which are two different things entirely, with the same tragic results.
I'm the kind of person who has left keys in the front door, or the ignition of the car. The kind of person who has put my wallet full of cash on top of the car and driven off. I was forgotten as a child, on several occasions - just not in a locked car.
I'm pregnant, and like a lot of things to do with that and having children, I have never ever once thought 'that would never happen to me'. That sort of narrative, that says "trauma only happens to people who break the rules" just doesn't exist in my world. Unlike a good friend who has decided that all of my worrying was for naught because I take the right vitamins and do the right things, so I'm safe, I don't expect to be safe from random occurences, my own mistakes and life in general simply because I follow rules.
Mind you, check the back seat needs to be a rule for me now (well, soon).
That said, there have been a lot of cases recently where children have died after being deliberately left in the car - to the point casinos do checks now.
My mother is a science nut, but also a hippie. So I got to live in hippie areas AND be vaccinated. Guess who ended up with rubella as a child? Luckily it was in the gap between my sister and I, although my mother did miscarry around that time. We get older and we move, to yet another hippie area, this time with a very low SES. This time it's my vaccinated fourteen year old sister who gets whooping cough. Which the local doctor refuses to diagnose as whooping cough because she is vaccinated (and she was also a terrible terrible doctor). So there's a month of my sister coughing until she vomits, then two months where she's terrified to eat because she might start coughing again. She lost about 15kg in this period - not of concern apparently, because all women want to be thin (have I mentioned how terrible this doctor was?) and 45kg wasn't dangerously underweight.
I also got chicken pox as a teen - I had always said it wasn't really a bad case. My mother overheard me saying that and was most puzzled. Turns out the five days we'd spent at my grandmother's house because I was too sick to leave didn't appear in my recollection - I was delirious for most of it. They had to bathe me. I only have one scar, but my mother spent five days bathing her thirteen-year old daughter.
It disturb me that the only recollection of the entire visit I have is of throwing egg and lettuce sandwiches out the window into the paddock.
My mother is only just now admitting that her beloved hippie small towns were not as healthy for us kids as she wanted to believe. Because when there's an epidemic, it ends up being bad for the immunocompromised (either by youth, or by a pre-existing issue).
Our local 2 big grocers (Coles + Safeway) are donating profits from a specified day of sales to the bushfires. Yeah, I made a point to go to Coles on Friday to grab a few things. I'll do the same this friday. It's stuff I'm going to buy anyway, so the profit may as well go to the bushfires. Because then I've also got regular donation money available.
In other words I have grocery money (A) and book money (B) and donation money (C). Rather than just C going to the bushfires, a certain amount of A and B will be going as well. Along with my plates, clothes, towels and some of my stuffed toy collection. Donation isn't just about money from nowhere - Sitepoint are accessing part of people's funds that wouldn't otherwise go to donations.
But hey, I spent last day coughing from the smoke that's finally made it's way into the city, and wondering if they'd caught the fake collecters for Red Cross yet. The last thing I'm worrying about is people annoyed they didn't get their cheap deal that also soothes their conscience. I am wondering if Danny Nalliah's lot shouldn't get more regulated though, given he followed a wonderful tradition of blaming ungodly behaviour for national disasters.
Tip: Red Cross aren't soliciting donations in person at the moment.
I think those stories of survival on the sea were discounted because the survivors were generally your hardcore naval men and sailors AND they were so bloody rare.
Hell, even now, a boat goes down and finding a survivor without someone being on the spot immediately (or close to immediately) is a rarity. Lots of survival is sheer luck and bloody minded stubborn sailors.
disclaimer - survival at sea is a bit of a bugbear for me. I lost two familiy members in twelve months to their boats going down. Two miles from each other and 11 months apart. There was one survivor from each boat - one swam to shore, one floated for a while and was found by accident. My uncle and cousin died going for the radio...
Making Light was the first place I came across disemvowelling, and I thought it was great then, and years later I still think it's great. Partially because there is little of the rules whining here, partially because it is moderated for on/off topicness, which really really cuts down on the cliqueness.
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