LogFAQs > #930593970

Educate y'selves: https://www.parents.com/baby/safety/car/youd-never-forget-your-child-in-the-car-right/

"Whenever an unintentional hot car death hits the media, the public response is the same: How could a parent leave her child in a hot car?

In most instances, the child had fallen asleep, so there was no sound to remind the parent to take him out. And if a baby was in a rear-facing car seat in the backseat, there was also no visual cue: The baby's head might not have been visible over the top of the seat.

This is a relatively new problem. Prior to the early 1990s, children were routinely placed in the front seat, where it was obvious that they were in the car. In fact, from 1990 to 1992 there were only 11 known deaths of children from heatstroke after being left in a car. After that, car seats were moved to the back. This is when airbags became common and kids riding in the front seat were being killed by them63 kids in 1995 alone.

But backseat riding isn't the only factor in heatstroke deaths, and safety experts stress that the backseat remains the safest place for children. Another major contributorone that's more difficult to comprehendrelates to the brain. "These are not negligent parents who have forgotten their kids," says David Diamond, Ph.D., a neuroscientist in the psychology department at the University of South Florida, in Tampa, who has reviewed the details of many hot-car deaths and has spent time with dozens of parents who unintentionally left their child in the car.

Understanding what they did, he says, requires grasping how two very different parts of the brain work. First are the basal gangliathe "background system" that controls our habits. "It allows us to do things without thinking about them," Dr. Diamond says. When you're training in sports, for example, you repeat an action over and over to fine-tune your skills. Once it's time to compete, the action is automatic. "Your basal ganglia take over and you don't have to think about how to bounce or shoot the ball."

Then there are the parts of the brain that control new information: the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus. The basal ganglia and prefrontal cortex essentially compete with each other, Dr. Diamond says. When you change up your routine and do something different, then the new details have to be processed by the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex to override the basal ganglia's strong desire to perform actions out of habit.

The basal ganglia play a big part in driving. "Once you've driven from Point A to Point B enough times, you can do it without thinking," Dr. Diamond says. "You might not even remember the trip." If new information enters the picture (say, your partner calls to ask you to stop at the store and buy milk), your prefrontal cortex and hippocampus have to kick into gear to incorporate it. "But it's common to drive right past the store and come home. When your partner says, 'Where's the milk?' you feel flustered because you remember the conversation, but for some reason you came home instead." Why? Because you were on autopilot. "The basal ganglia actually suppress the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus from bringing that memory to your consciousness," explains Dr. Diamond.

Stress worsens this phenomenon, he adds. "It affects how our prefrontal cortex functions and makes it more likely we'll do something out of habit." And those factors, ultimately, are what allow otherwise responsible parents to leave their child in a car. In every hot-car death Dr. Diamond has studied, something was different about the routine that day. In some cases, Mom made two stops instead of her usual one. In other cases, Dad drove the baby instead of Mom or there was some other extra stress. And the basal ganglia won control."
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I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel.