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| Gwinnett mother arrested, but very lucky |
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| Written by Ron Kaye |
| Friday, 20 August 2010 16:28 |
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Cited with two counts of reckless conduct for leaving her children in car Thursday morning, 25-year-old Elizabeth Bell was arrested at the Gwinnett County Court Annex Building after an employee of the Department of Family and Children's Services reported seeing two small children unattended in a car outside the building, where Mrs. Bell had gone to pay a traffic ticket. According to Mrs. Bell's own statement to deputies, she had left the children, one two years old, and the other only seven weeks old, in the car for approximately half an hour. Despite having been arrested, Mrs. Bell was very lucky. Her children, who were asleep in the car, emerged from the ordeal unharmed, and were released to her sister. In far too many instances throughout the country, children left unattended in vehicles in the summer heat end up very sick or even dead. According to the journal Pediatrics (http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/116/1/e109), between the years 1998 and 2010, there have been 483 cases in the US of children dying from hyperthermia (heat stress) after being left unattended in vehicles - an average of 37 per year. In 2010, we have already reached that horrendous milestone, with the historically hottest month still to come. Some experts recommend that parents who are transporting their children place something essential, such as a purse or briefcase, in the back seat with the child, so that the parent will be less likely to forget the child is there and leave him or her unattended. This raises the question: If a purse, briefcase, cell phone, or other inanimate object is more likely to be remembered than one's own child, is parenthood even a wise choice for that person? Back in 2002, NASA developed a safety device called the Child Presence Sensor that would alert parents who leave their vehicles with infants or small children still strapped in their car seats. Obviously, this technological attempt to idiot-proof parenthood didn't get very far, although there has recently been talk about requiring that some type of warning device be installed in all new vehicles. Of course, consumers - even those with no children - would subsidize the cost of such additional equipment. To make matters worse, some parents would inevitably find a way to disable the device. As is typically the case, attempts to idiot-proof any system only results in the creation of better idiots. Of course, neither of these solutions would have any effect on someone who, like Elizabeth Bell, consciously chose to leave her children in the car. Even though she apparently left one window open to allow some air circulation inside the vehicle, the temperature inside the vehicle on a hot summer day could still have risen to a level capable of severely injuring or even killing her children. And we won't even go into the potential for some sick individual seeing ant taking an opportunity to take the children. Mrs. Bell said in her defense that the children were sleeping and she left them in the car because she didn't want to disturb them. She was lucky, at least this time. Far too many parents - and children - are not. Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites |
