https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-49600499

Having brought up two children how did I manage without a reminder to remove my precious off-spring from the vehicle when parking up?

Perhaps self driving cars of the future could be fitted with docks for self wheeling buggies so the child is taken to and removed from the vehicle without any parental involvement whatsoever.

For goodness' sake! The car makers are being blamed for not doing enough to warn parents of children in the car? Aren't the parents supposed to be responsible for this, or is it the usual mantra of someone else being responsible for their stupidity? Over half of the cases were where parents forgot they had a child in the car?! I've never been able to forget this. Are we seeing a generation of muppets populating the world?

800 people over 20 years forgot in the USA, I know life can be stressful but I agree how on earth can you forget a child on the back seat

Originally Posted by: Bigmac1

800 people over 20 years forgot in the USA, I know life can be stressful but I agree how on earth can you forget a child on the back seat

I am often reminded of one occasion when I arrived home and put the kettle on for a nice cup of tea when the phone rang and it was my wife who was at the local petrol station. I had forgotten she was in the car with me and she had got out to browse the shop and I had paid for the fuel and driven home without her.

Fear not both my children are now well into their twenties by some miracle...

Originally Posted by: biker1

Are we seeing a generation of muppets populating the world?

Unfortunately we are nurturing such persons.

More technology is apparently not the answer https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/297901-ntsb-autopilot-design-flaw-inattentive-driver-led-to-tesla-firetruck-crash

Think the only thing flawed here was that the car didn't execute the driver to the benefit of the gene pool.

I've just come back from doing our weekly generator checks and realised when I tested it last week I left it in 'stop' mode rather than 'auto' mode. Perhaps not such a serious example of forgetfulness but had we had a significant out of hours power failure several tens of thousand of pounds worth of refrigerated stock would have been lost.

I got away with it, this time.......

Maybe an alarm could be fitted to the generator to alert me if it is left out of 'auto' for a significant amount of time?

Good to know none of you would ever forget, but 38 child deaths per year in the USA show that real humans can make some awful but genuine mistakes. Human Factors tells us that relying on people to 'not forget' is no enough and we should look for technical solutions whenever we can.

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/07/28/us/nyc-baby-deaths-sunday/index.html

https://humanfactors101.com/2017/05/21/fatal-distraction/

Why does society need a technological resolution for every matter?

Occassionally the outcome is much better if the human retained control (MCAS)

Taking personal responsibility for your own actions is no longer prevalent. Why accept responsibility when someone else could have or should have done something.

I'm fat because of McDonalds so it must be their fault;  I got nicked for speeding well it must be the car companies for making cars that go over the speed limit; I broke my arm when I fell over drunk, not my fault it was the pub for selling me alcohol.

What happens when you introduce more and more technology to take out the need for us to think andthat technology fails!? It wasn’t my fault the children got left in the car anddied, the warning device didn’t work so it must be the car companies fault.

It’s a serious worry that with the new generation coming up the days of putting your hand up and saying ‘you know what it was my fault I take full responsibility for my actions’ are lost when it’s easy to say that its societies fault.

More worryingly that particular Dave was with others - to be fair to the protection officers they were there to look after the PM not his off-spring

So a lot of you safety professionals think that human errors can be prevented by people being told to take personnal responsibility and to be more careful. No wonder we keep having major accidents in industry.

The current population of USA is 327 million. Lets assume that 2% of these are children in nursery and each one is dropped off at nursery 200 times per year. That is 1.3 billon drop-offs in a year. 38 deaths in a year is equivalent to one fatal human error per 291 million drop offs. Do you seriously think you could do something 291 million times and guarantee not to make a mistake?

When I think of some of the trivia that is discussed on this forum I am very surprised deaths of very young children does not create a more informed response.

Yes, of course should take care in everything they do but human factors shows us that we are all falible. Sometimes leaving the human in control is a better solution but in others we put in additional layers of protection to account for the possible errors.

Does everyone need to place their hand on the hot plate to know/demonstrate to others (exhibiting competence) it burns?

Why would a forum dedicated to Occupational Safety and Health (18 years or older in the UK so not the UN definition of a child) actively consider the lower age spectrum (plenty of education/parent forums for that)?

Please correct me if I have it wrong but I have been brought up to believe in Nuclear there is the "blip, blop" which sounds constantly when everything is alright, and then when everything goes very quiet it is time to bend double with your head between your knees and kiss your......

The exact opposite of the alarm overload often suffered by commercial pilots where maunfacturers choose to add ever increasing technological alarms

Edited by user 06 September 2019 21:31:36(UTC)  | Reason: red induced FFS

I wonder if vehicle manufacturers invent a system which prohibits mothers from opening a car door on the road side to let little Charlie or Maisy out of the vehicle.   

Having read the article, I don't actually see any of the parents failing to take responsibility.  No-one seems to be advocating transferring responsibility, they seem to be calling for warning devices (which are technologically feasible) to be fitted.  Mr Harrison in particular strikes me as having accepted it was entirely his fault.  He has to live with that, and if a relatively simple device avoids other parents living with the knowledge that they killed their child, I'd be in favour of it. 

Some of the arguments being advanced against this seem to be verging on 'if they are that stupid they deserve their child to be killed', and I'm not at all comfortable with that. I observe that while I've never left either daughter in the car, people make mistakes and sleep deprived parents do dumb things.  I did lose my daughter in a  hotel once, and it was literally physically sickening - I can't imagine what it would be like for a parent to know they killed their child.  I think we're at a pretty sorry place where we've lost so much compassion as society that the general consensus response to a parent in this situation is that it serves them right for being stupid.

Are all warning systems an abdication of responsibility?  Will you be removing beacons and sounders from all your mobile plant?  Are they an abdication of responsibility also?

Originally Posted by: achrn

Some of the arguments being advanced against this seem to be verging on 'if they are that stupid they deserve their child to be killed', and I'm not at all comfortable with that. I observe that while I've never left either daughter in the car, people make mistakes and sleep deprived parents do dumb things.  I did lose my daughter in a  hotel once, and it was literally physically sickening - I can't imagine what it would be like for a parent to know they killed their child.  I think we're at a pretty sorry place where we've lost so much compassion as society that the general consensus response to a parent in this situation is that it serves them right for being stupid.

I totally disagree with what you say.  No one is even suggesting that they got what they deserved, it is a tragedy of the highest order.  

However, as a parent you have a duty to look after your offspring, morning, noon, night, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.  You cannot expect a car manufacturer to have an alarm just in case you forget you've put a baby in the car seat.  Perhaps cot manufacturers can have an alarm just in case you leave the house, or shopping trolleys can have an alarm to ensure you unpack baby and the shopping at the same time.  At what point do we take responsibility for our own actions?

Originally Posted by: achrn

Are all warning systems an abdication of responsibility?  Will you be removing beacons and sounders from all your mobile plant?  Are they an abdication of responsibility also?

Beacons and sounders are there to warn other people in the area, not the operator of the plant.  The operator of the plant doesn't need beacons and sounders because, presumably, he knows he is there.

I’m a great fan of using technology to our advantage, however what I’m not great fan of is a reliance on technology to tell us when something is wrong.

As Health & Safety Professionals we look at risk, hazards and the potential for harm. You could argue that the amount of children in left car compared to how many car users with children there are, is in fact a low risk and calling for need to install alarms in all cars is not practicable? I don’t have all the data at hand to make that judgement call.

In work, should we identify the need for alarms on systems to identify an issue we will carry out training, checks so people don’t just rely on the alarms and testing of the system to make sure its effective. Part of that training and checks will be making sure it can’t be switched or circumvented. Part of the duty of care and supervision.

In the real world none of this will take place. No one pays any attention to car alarms, how many people will plug the seat belt in when carrying a load on a seat to stop the alarm going off or turn the alarm off due to a dog on the seat (which you can leave in the car, but that’s a different story in the summer).

Any system will have the option to turn it off for the reason above. So what happens when one person’s turns the alarm off, the second person gets in the car and isn’t aware. But what about a warning message I hear you cry. If you have a new car with fancy screens it pings up loads of warning messages, which trust me you will ignore and just ‘OK’ very quickly.

So now you have a situation where a parent is relying on the car to tell them they have left the children in the back and if they system has failed or been switched off, what then? Whose fault is that?

Going back to us safety professionals what would you write into a Risk Assessment or SSOW with something fitted with a warning alarm? Would you tell people to just wait for the alarm to sound to tell you there is an issue or would you teach people to always carry out an all-around check, to test the alarm to check it is working and to never rely on the alarm?

No one wants to see another child die due to being left in a car, but is putting in an alarm the best course of action. A parent could leave their child behind in a shopping centre or park, do we then fit all children with a proximity alarm. I don’t know the answer, but I know that every time I get in and out of a car I check the backseats regardless if I have my kids with me or not, I got into the habit of doing so to the point it’s now become the norm. I check my tyre pressure and oil levels without waiting for the car to tell me too and once my kids are older I will teach them the same.

There is a risk of putting in an automated system to solve all our problems in life, but what happens when that system fails?

Originally Posted by: Roundtuit

Please correct me if I have it wrong but I have been brought up to believe in Nuclear there is the "blip, blop" which sounds constantly when everything is alright, and then when everything goes very quiet it is time to bend double with your head between your knees and kiss your......

The exact opposite of the alarm overload often suffered by commercial pilots where maunfacturers choose to add ever increasing technological alarms

 it does at the sites I have visisted, and whilst it is disconcerting at first you do get used to it and the 2sudden silence" does work in alerting you to a problem. Tgheses are generally quite workplaces so you can hear the blip................Blip.............blip

However, I agree with earlier posters, the world is getting noiser with beeps, chimes and pings and various alerts, I am  getting a bit deaf and find it increasingly hard to seperate the noises, particularly the one that discretely tells me the fuel is low.

Maybe this is more a symptom of people trying to do to much in too little time and rather than admit that they cannot cope seeking to shift some of the responsibility?

There's such a thing as too many alarms, whereas they will lead to people either completely ignoring them or actively trying to reduce them: seatbelts plugged in, bypass seat sensors (ebay), cutting the wire, etc.

I guess you could argue that it's better safe than sorry, but overuse might lead to distracted driving (we have that already).

It's funny how everyone agrees on the need to limit false alarms with regards to fire safety but we're perfectly ok to discuss about adding more whilst driving, an activity during which most people are in an automatic process (if they're not learners).

There are so many chimes and beeps all around us that people have become accustomed to it and disregard them as nuisance noise. To me it seems like a lawyer's advice in trying to get rid of potential lawsuits.

I'm pretty sure there could be a more practicable solution that could potentially save a life. Relying on an alarm is nothing short of telling someone "i told you to be careful" as opposed to the "you should've been more careful" advice after the event was consumed. 

It's the automatic process that needs to be tackled, and,  after the initial excitment and awarness of the new feature/gadget (controlled process), it will kick in again, likely keeping those statistics unchanged. 

Seatbelts chimes have done little to nothing in changing the percentage of people flying through the windshield in my home country and the majority keep bypassing it.

I'm aware of that, I was referring to the cumulus, regardless if the car is in motion or stationary. The effect on the consciousness level will be the same nontheless.

I've left my headlights on while parked a number of times, despite of the alert chime. I'm still not sure if I had the radio on at the time to block the sound or I was just absent minded.

Originally Posted by: CptBeaky

Considering it could be as simple as the car issuing a warning and refusing to lock if any of the seatbelts are engaged,

Great, except some designs of car seat are of the semi-permanent nature and never removed from the vehicle so the seat belt (or Iso-lok system) remains engaged for however long you have the vehicle and the seat needs to be available regardless of the presence of the child.

andy that's a bit of a leap to bring in process industries. Here we're talking about Joe public not oil rigs, regular drills and repetitive training.

Alarms are not responded to the same way and it will just add to the 15-20 chimes available in most modern cars.

Clearly this is an issue, but if we read the article, the father that lost his adopted child also states that alarms won't do much.