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    My Hovercraft Is Full Of EelsBreanna Edwards
    8/11/17 3:56pm

    Usually, when I hear about these hot-car deaths, I am pretty unsympathetic towards the person responsible. Often, it’s a parent who intentionally left a kid in the car for many hours in hot weather while they went to work/shop/get drunk/get laid. Which amounts to epic stupidity.

    But I can actually see how a van driver could fail to notice one out of the six kids she was transporting was still in the van. This is negligence, but not necessarily an extreme amount of negligence. I’m on the fence about her being charged with manslaughter.

    In any case, in this modern technological age, perhaps someone can work on coming up with a way to automatically keep track of who got picked up and make sure those same kids got delivered to day care or school? There are too many stories of bus drivers dropping kids off at the wrong locations or, as in this case, not dropping them off at all.

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      theburnersMy Hovercraft Is Full Of Eels
      8/11/17 5:09pm

      Often, it’s a parent who intentionally left a kid in the car for many hours in hot weather while they went to work/shop/get drunk/get laid.

      Most of the time, it’s like.... the one partner who doesn’t usually take care of driving the kid to daycare, but the one who usually does it can’t one day for one reason or another, then the kid goes with the parent that doesnt usually do it, and the kid falls asleep and the parent forgets and just drives straight to work.

      That kind of thing.

      The parent is usually excoriated because, to be honest; we’re all forgetful creatures — and that immediate response of “well I could forget my keys or my wallet but I would never forget a precious child!” is just a convenient fiction we tell ourselves.

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      My Hovercraft Is Full Of Eelstheburners
      8/11/17 5:20pm

      Sometimes parents do forget. It does happen.

      But in my view, even then, there’s still a higher level of negligence involved in forgetting one kid, particularly when it’s your own damn kid, than some bus or van driver handling multiple strangers’ kids.

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    HuskyBroBreanna Edwards
    8/11/17 12:43pm

    Just when you think this story can’t possibly get any worse, Tragedy says “hold my drank”.

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      gordiva878HuskyBro
      8/11/17 1:05pm

      She only had 6 children in the van?! SIX. Please tell me this is not the case, this is insane.

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      funnymonkeygordiva878
      8/11/17 3:14pm

      Yeah, so I don’t believe ANY of her story. When I saw this yesterday I almost started crying at my desk. That poor baby. I have a kid who is about a year older than him. I can tell you that it would have been VERY hard to forget he was in the car, especially with other kids around.

      But, ok, let’s say Myles is a very quiet little boy. Maybe he fell asleep and was quiet. None of the other kids went to help him out, or noticed that he didn’t get out? My kids fucking love to wake each other up when we get somewhere. So the other kids let him sleep or just ignored him and didn’t say anything when he didn’t get out? That doesn’t track with my experience with kids in cars.

      Ok. The other kids ignored him. Cars get hot FAST and little guys love roaming around a car loose. If he was in a booster rather than a car seat, as seems to be the case, he could undo his own seatbelt. He didn’t say anything or move into her line of sight when she went BACK to the car? I think he would have started playing in the car and, when it got hot, he would have tried to find a way out. Might not have been able to do it, but I don’t think he would have stayed quiet when she came back.

      I think Myles was being a typical three year old and was being stubborn and defiant. He was probably loud and obnoxious and drove her crazy while she was driving and/or just refused to get out of the car. So, she left him there as punishment. “You don’t want to get out? Fine. Stay there.” He was probably still being a brat when she went back to the car (if she did at all). Then, she forgot about him. And then it was too late.

      Thinking about it on the way home last night, that was honestly the only scenario that I can imagine. Kids can be annoying and a lot of dumb adults get really dumb and dangerous ideas about punishment. I hope this woman suffers for a long, long time. She shouldn’t be anywhere near children.

      This is why universal preK and quality, affordable childcare is so important. We’ve completely failed Myles and all the other kids who have suffered at the hands of cruel people who inexplicably decide that childcare is a good choice for them. Daycare should be subsidized and regulated so that caring, well-trained people are looking after kids. Not people desperate for a job who don’t give a shit about kids.

      This is also why I’m a nutjob about my kids going anywhere with someone else. I can’t believe they had an 11 year old in the front and this poor baby in the wrong restraint. A car accident would have hurt a lot of those babies.

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