cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/18901880

A Texas mother was taken into custody Tuesday after police alleged her 22-month-old child died when she left the infant in a car outside a Corpus Christi school on one of the hottest days of the year.

The mother, 33-year-old Hilda Ann Adame, was jailed on charges of causing serious bodily injury to a child and child endangerment/abandonment with imminent bodily injury, according to a Corpus Christi Police Department incident report.

It was not clear how long the infant had been in the car before the baby was found unresponsive, according to the incident report.

  • disgrunty@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I don’t have kids and I don’t plan to, but instead of all the smart crap in cars, why don’t car manufacturers put some kind of car seat detection in? Like a little alarm that plays if you walk away from your car with a baby or child in it?

    They can tell if someone’s in a seat without their seatbelt, they should be able to work out a way to detect car seats too. This is 100% preventable.

    Hell, not even car manufacturers. If someone made a Hackathon-type event where the goal was to make the best baby alert system, I’m sure there’s at least one smart person out there who could crack this.

    • madcaesar@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      No can do, that makes too much sense.

      Here is a touch screen and the HVAC controls are 4 menus deep.

      • disgrunty@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        That’s good to hear! Hopefully it becomes more common or someone makes a universal kit to adapt existing vehicles someday. It probably wouldn’t be as elegant as a built-in fix, but definitely less waste and expense.

      • disgrunty@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        That would be ideal, I agree. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t make cars safer in the meantime for children, who don’t have a say in the matter.

    • MTK@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Simple reason, people ignore/disable it.

      Most people using cars are adults, only a small number also have a young enough child that this would be a worry. You can buy specialized pads that you put on the seat which reminds you if something was left there, and yet this happens a lot.

      The truth of the matter is, people are the problem and a technological solution would have to be mich more complex to work around peoples’ carelessness and ignorance

  • Telorand@reddthat.com
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    4 months ago

    That would suck to be arrested after accidentally (even if it was pure stupidity) killing your child. My car got to 122 recently. That’s an unthinkably bad day.

    Parents, teach your kids how to bang on the door as early as you can, so they can at least ask for help in the event they’re strapped into a car seat and can’t escape.

    • Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Parents do not need to teach kids to bang on doors. Geez.

      Parents need to be responsible and not leave their own kids in a car to die, or don’t be parents in the first place.

      • Telorand@reddthat.com
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        4 months ago

        Shit happens, even with loving parents. Do you know what it feels like to have four hours of sleep non-contiguous each day for three years? That’s some parents’ experience.

        Teaching your kids to survive regardless of your parenting doesn’t mean you’re a bad parent. It means you care about your kids enough to do everything possible to make sure they survive.

        • BambiDiego@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          Sensibly, you’re right.

          In the real world, there’s no excuse, just explanations.

          A 2 year old just cannot be expected to handle a crisis of any sort. You can teach them to be careful, to be aware, to be expressive, to be communicative, but never to handle a real crisis.

          • Telorand@reddthat.com
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            4 months ago

            Just gotta do your best, and hopefully you’ve done enough to ensure they survive to adulthood.

      • GBU_28@lemm.ee
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        4 months ago

        This mistake happens to mature, professional people, of no discernable background, race, income. First parents, second parents. Doctors, layers, teachers, janitors.

        Habit distribution, sleep deprivation and distraction have no pattern of afflicting only some cluster of “irresponsible” people, in so much that anyone could determine who is in, or out of that “irresponsible” group. Including you.

        • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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          4 months ago

          He has five children. Today, he says, is the birthday of his sixth.

          Get this man some condoms. No parent has enough time to properly raise six children. I think it’s cruel to the kids to just keep having them.