Apr 22, 2023 4 min read

This past week, 33-year-old Khang Ngyuen of Peters Township entered a guilty plea to charges of involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment in the death of his 3-month-old son last June. He inadvertently left the child in his vehicle for hours while he carried on his daily routine. It was on a day when temperatures reached 91 degrees, and the infant was dead by the time Nguyen remembered that he was still strapped into a car seat in his van.

Whether you’re a parent or not, it would be natural to react to a story like this with both horror and astonishment – horror that a child would die in such a way, and astonishment that any parent would forget that a baby was in their car. After all, if you’re a mom or dad, you know how demanding and attention-seeking they can be. If they are hungry, in pain because of teething, or merely bored, they tend to let you know about it in no uncertain terms.

But it can actually happen to the best and most competent parents. According to the nonprofit child safety organization Kids and Cars, which is based in the Philadelphia suburb of Bala Cynwyd, more than 1,000 children have died since 1990 in the United States because they were left in hot cars. That is, of course, a much smaller number compared to the number of children who die in vehicle accidents – more than 1,000 children died that way in 2019 alone, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration – but it’s enough to make you sit up and take notice. As we head into summer, it seems likely that there will be another few children added to the grim toll tracked by Kids and Cars.

So how could a well-meaning parent forget a child is in their car? David Diamond, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern Florida, told USA Today in 2019 that it can be a failure of our memory system. He pointed out that we have “prospective memory” that propels us to complete tasks that fall outside our everyday routines, and “habit memory,” where we go about our daily tasks on what amounts to autopilot. Prospective memory is what fails when a child is left in the car. In Diamond’s formulation, it is overrun by our habit memory, which is how a child could end up in the car alone while their parent clocks in for work.

It’s the same sort of failure that would lead someone to leave a steaming cup of coffee on the roof of their car and drive off or, more tragically, not put the slats and flaps out on a plane before takeoff, an error that has led to crashes.

According to Kids and Cars, children have been accidentally left in cars by parents who are teachers, police officers, clergy and nurses – it can happen to anyone.

The organization suggests parents or guardians leave a vital item in the backseat, such as a laptop, a handbag or even a shoe, that they will have to retrieve before they get their day going. That would allow them to see if a child is there. Kids and Cars also said a visual cue, like a diaper bag in the front seat, can be helpful. The organization has also supported making sensors that would go off if a child or pet is left behind a standard accessory in vehicles.

No child should have their life ended prematurely because of absent-mindedness. And no parent should have to endure the lifetime of guilt that would result because of it.