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New York seems so incredibly intent on telling parents how to raise their kids that the State Senate just voted for a bill it already voted for in 2012 and 2013, snaetsnrsb
prohibiting kids under age 8 from waiting in the car.
The bill has yet to become law because, apparently, the Assembly keeps voting it down or simply letting it die. This will sound strange but: Let’s hear it for the New York State Assembly!
Meantime, according to an article posted today by the Associated Press:
New York state would make it illegal to leave a child younger than 8 in a vehicle alone under legislation that has won passage in the state Senate.
The Senate voted in favor of the bill on Monday. It now moves to the Assembly for consideration.
The bill’s sponsor, Republican Sen. Jack Martins of Long Island, says cars should never be used as “baby sitters” and that leaving a young child in a car alone can lead to ‘tragedy.”
The measure is designed to prevent children from being left alone in vehicles when it’s too hot or cold. The Senate cited data showing that more than 700 children have died from heat stroke in the last 25 years around the country after being left alone in cars.
But then there’s this post of mine from 2012:
Hi Readers. My very own state — New York — just passed an overprotective, unnecessary, parental-decision-damning bill. Here’s the scoop, according to the Queens Chronicle:
In order to better ensure child safety, the state Senate unanimously passed a bill on Feb. 29 that would make it illegal for parents or guardians to leave children under the age of 8 alone in a motor vehicle. Multiple infractions would constitute a misdemeanor.
The bill applies to any person legally charged with care of a child and states that they cannot be left alone or with anyone under the age of 12, “under conditions which would knowingly or recklessly present a significant risk to the health or safety of the child.”
So let me repeat myself, just like the NY State Senate:
The problem is that what I consider a “significant risk” may be quite different from what the authorities consider a “significant risk.” So even if I think my 7-year-old can wait in the car, reading a comic book, while I go in to buy stamps, someone else with a badge or gavel might consider that treacherous. After all, what if there’s a carjacking? What if the child is snatched? What if the car overheats in ten minutes and somehow my kid can’t figure out how to open the door? Or (to paraphrase some folks interviewed in the Queens Chronicle article): What if the state needs to make money and penalizing my parenting decisions is an easy way to grab it?.I understand the actual issue driving this particular law: Trying to save children from being forgotten in the car and left to die a horrible death by hyperthermia. But it’s not as if anyone MEANS to forget their child in the car all day. So saying, “Forget your child and you will get a ticket!” is not likely to have a bigger effect than, “Forget your child and he may DIE.”.As I’ve said before on this topic, the best way to keep your kids safe is to put your purse, briefcase, phone and/or wallet in the back seat next to the car seat. That way, even if somehow you WERE about to forget your sleeping infant (which is the way most of the deaths happen), now you will open the back door and see him/her there.
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37 Comments
Well, I violate this law nearly every time I pick my daughter up from school. My 4 yo gets dismissed first so I pick him up and take him with me to get her. Once her class gets to the door, I get out of the car, leave him in it, and go get her. This happens pretty much every time I pick her up and the weather is bad. If its nice, we both wait outside the 10 min or so for her while he runs around playing.
@Lenore: Speaking of the risks of driving… Have you seen this yet, about (not) putting risks in perspective?
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/calgary/calgary-pedestrians-fire-trucks-road-design-relative-risk-1.3501082
hmmm…election year. DONE. hot button topic. DONE. something to whip up the voters and easily squash down dissent by claiming injury of a vulnerable group. DONE
Sure looks like something designed by a politician to keep them in office, while providing little to no benefit to the populace. With police forces already stretched thin, as well as Youth Services Departments in many states, looks like another feel good law that will get little to no enforcement.
Your government at work!
It’s really too bad that these lawmakers do not distinguish between parents who consciously/knowingly leave their kids in the car for a few minutes to run an errand and those parents who inadvertently and tragically leave a child because they’ve forgotten he/she is in the car. That’s not to say that the parents who forget their child should be prosecuted either but there really is a big difference between the two. As I’ve mentioned before, leaving a newborn in a car, as was the case for my husband, can happen to anyone; we were just very lucky that he was meeting up with me, so I noticed right right away that he had forgotten her so no harm was done.
The second part to this controversy that I dearly wish everyone would pay attention to is the fact that the mere act of driving with your kid in a car is the most dangerous thing you can do. It bothers me that the lawmakers and helicopter parents gloss over that fact, but zero in on parents who briefly leave a child in the car to run an errand, which is a much less risky behaviour.
Who’s to say that 8 is the right age? Maybe they should make it no kids under 18 can be left alone in a car, just to make it really extra safe. /sarcasm
Seriously, though, the age is ridiculous. They can’t legislate common sense. Besides, my kids have very different personalities. My 8 year old would actually have more sense being left alone in a car than my 12 year old. But then again, how would a government group know that? Decisions like this need to be left to the people who know these kids best. And that’s not some legislative body.
This is one of those dumbass laws floated by one party or the other designed to ambush at election time. Any representative who exercises common sense and votes against it will have it come back to haunt them. You have all heard the commercials. “Representative So and So doesn’t care for the safety of our children. He voted against Bill Number xxxxx that would have provided for their safety.”
I still think of the hassle over the child being left alone in the Casino in Pittsburgh a few years ago. I was waiting in the car next to him reading a book, while he was watching a movie on his tablet. It was a nice mild evening in an indoor garage. The news made a big stink over it, but the charges were later dropped. They didn’t report that. By the way, that child was 9 and wouldn’t have been covered by this law.
Ironically, the kid in that PSA photo is too big for that seat. The headrest needs to be at least a couple inches above her head.
Lenore, i was almost hit by some a**hole at a gas station. Im 20. So yes, taking them out of the car can be more dangerous. Why do people freak out about leaving them for a short trip into a store or gas station when i know from experience that it can be more dangerous to walk across a parking lot?
A few facts, if they would make any difference to the NY state legislature. All of this gleaned from the stats at http://noheatstroke.org/ and from news articles obtained by looking up the names listed there.
In the last 13 years, (from 2003 to present, all the years with complete date from noheatstroke) the state of NY has lost 5 children to hot car deaths. This happens less than once very two years in New York.
Not one of these children had reached the age of 2.
Not one of these children was left in a car while the parents ran an errand.
Of the 5 parents involved 3 were charged with negligent homicide, at least one was convicted due to routine drug abuse.
–Nationally, from 1998 on, about half of all hot car deaths involve children 2 and younger.
–By 3 years old a child is most likely to die in a hot car because the child wandered away and trapped themselves. This usually happens during nap time. (Based on my reading and analysis of articles about every hot car death from 2014 to present)
–By 5 years old, a child who dies after trapping themselves in a hot car is more likely to have an intellectual disability, than to be nurotypical. (Based on my reading and analysis of articles about every hot car death from 2014 to present)
–For the 2014 to present period, not a single child over 5, in the US has died in a hot car, and not a single child over 4 has died from being forgotten in a hot car.
–A 7 years old is no more likely to die in a hot car, than a 14 year old. (Based on national stats for 1998-present and all mental conditions.)
New Yorkers — make sure to call out your senators on the inanity of bills like this! And Lenore, thank you for keeping us apprised of these types of things. I continue to follow this site in part so that I can be aware of any such legislation in my own state (Illinois) and take action against it.
Oh, bonus factoid.
Despite record setting heat in 2015. There were fewer hot car deaths than in any year since 1998 when airbag deaths reached a peak, driving the advice to never put a child in the front seat.
2015 was also the first year that Kids and Cars . org started emphasizing “Look Before you lock” rather than supporting the virulent notion that children were being left on purpose. I dare say the “Look Before you lock” campaign saved between 5 and 25 children last year alone. Something all the blame in the world couldn’t do.
So, every parent of infants in NY would be a criminal. As soon as they exit the car, they have abandoned all children that are within the confines of the vehicle until they can open the back door and release them. Or, is there a certain grace-distance from the car or grace-period between exiting the car and releasing the kids which buffers a crime? This is apparently equally true whether on a main street in the city or parked in a grove of trees at the bungalows.
Why couldn’t the children walk with the parent-to go shopping etc.
This sounds to me like one more, “Pre-cursor” for CPS to “Legally Abduct” children.
I find it impossible to believe that the purpose of this bill is so solitary. It can’t possibly be passed for it’s own merit, or the “fines”, that are to make revenue, when the real money is with the ever Unconstitutional practice of a knock on the door following, entry of CPS into the home of the child. To then further build a case for removal of the child or children. This CPS “Industry”, is already destroying kids and their families for: 1.) Thier own personal gain and job security. And…2.) The travesty of Thier purpose in doing so, MORE MONEY FOR NEW YORK! The Federal Funded Frieght Train Frim Unconstitutional Hell”. These families will become a new demographic, among those already being used”, giving New York much greater revenue ( Which I can read the hand writing on the walk, having been a victim of this “Rico” Act put in place by our own government.
Look beyond the fine!!!! If anyone is aware of the CPS nightmare. This country is using funds made on the backs of our children to solve the financial crisis’ they get themselves into.
It makes me wonder, with all of this grant money etc. to,”Go Green”, or “to save the Planet”? Who the hell are we saving it for.
Prayer has been taken out of our schools. Then, why not teach ALL religion to students at a higher level, let’s say’ for example’ the 8th or 9th grade. Perhaps at that age they can learn each religion and have respect for religions that they may or may not agree with, but understand.
Then take cursive out of our schools, with the result…… No one will be able to read the Constitution, it’s Amendments, The Bill of Rights, etc. in order that no one knows what Thier rights are or the premises on which this Country was built! Treat the average, or even above, like Mushrooms! The Constitution was Stolen and misused for decades, in order that those in power can have it absolute. So, like mushrooms, keep the population in the dark, and feed us shit! Isn’t that what we have now! You have to exploit and steal our children too. I guarantee the fines for a second or third offense to this bill will never be paid. CPS, will have these children removed from Thier families immediately after the first offense has been established. They must investigate if there is any indication of child safety. Then BLINK! Because these children will be gone! Do not insult the people of New York, or the Coyntry as a whole. After all, you can’t possibly treat the growing number of victims and people made aware of your attack on families the way in which Former Georgia Senator, the late Nancy Schaefer was treated. Who will be left to vote?
I know when one passes by a car and happens to see an unaccompanied child in it, one has no idea if they’ve been left there on purpose or by accident. I wonder if it would be helpful, when I leave my sleeping toddler in the car for a 5 minute, 20 feet away errand, if I were to put a little sign on the window with a “where parent is” and estimated time of return.
Or whether that would be courting trouble and drawing busybody attention to the fact that there’s a child in the car. Heck, it would probably be condemned as more dangerous, because, you know, attracting a child predator, since according to the media, they’re everywhere!
Thousands of children die or are injured in car crashes every year. But they want to push a stupid law where the car ISN’T moving, and the child is quietly sitting and waiting? And the government is now extending it’s power to determine what is best for OUR children? 80 degrees to me and mine is nice, even sitting in the car. But I’m sure there are those that 70 degrees is unbearable. And if they are some of the lawmakers, then 70 degrees would be legally “dangerous”? lol!
I keep saying this, and I’ll say it again. Doesn’t matter if your the President, a governor, the chief of police, what you do for a living, and how much you make doesn’t determine who YOU are. What you do, based on what you think and believe, determines who you are as a person. So if your naturally a paranoid person, with authority, and pushes things to satiate YOUR fears, and impose that what is good for YOU, is good for everyone, that makes you ignorant and stupid. And why would I listen to an ignorant and stupid person just because they are a Senator or Governor?
@diane: I have a much simpler solution for you. It’s what we call common sense. If I saw a kid in a car by themselves.
1. I’d check to see if they looked ok. Not in distress. If they looked like they were in trouble, I’d call for help and get the child out. If they looked ok, even happily playing in the backseat. I move on.
2. I’d assess the situation. Is it really hot out? Are the windows down. Where is the closest store? If it’s really hot out (or not), I’m well aware of how hot it would be in a car. If I have no problem leaving my kids in the car at that temp. Then I’m sure the child in the car is fine too. If the closest store or establishment, were the parent would have most likely gone to, is not a distance at all. I’d leave it alone. If I was really concerned, I’d come back after a few minutes, to check in again. But if after assessing the situation, and not giving into fears, I find that the child seems ok. I’ll leave it at that.
3. I’d check to see if the car was running and/or the doors are locked. If the doors were locked, cool. If it were open, I’d lock them for the owner. If the car was running, and doors unlocked, I’d turn the car off, locked the doors, and wait for the parent to return. And when they do, I wouldn’t be freaking out at them. I’d give them their keys, and give them a friendly reminder that if your going to leave your kid in the car, make sure the car isn’t running, and doors unlocked. Nothing wrong with leaving kids in the car, but you chance getting your car stolen with your kid in it. Everyone makes mistakes, it’s how they react, and how/if they learn from that mistake that’s most important.
All of this, because this is just my mindset, takes no more than a few seconds to assess. If people used common sense, logic and reason on a regular basis, they wouldn’t have to think so hard. Or over think things. Which usually, if your looking for something, even if it isn’t there, you’ll end up making yourself believe it is. That’s just how the human brain works. Fear overrides all reason.
There are simple solutions to many parenting concerns. People just make things far more complicated than they really are. And it’s always based on their selfish, sanctimonious attitude. Not so much about the kids themselves. If they truly cared about children’s safety in their own fearful way. They wouldn’t make compromises when “keeping them safe” becomes an inconvenience. Can’t have your cake and it eat it too.
I’m so sick of this car centric topic. Please can you blog about some other topic.
I used to leave my kids for a few minutes in the car under safe conditions. I don’t anymore because, although the people who are Free Range are intelligent, informed people, the general public may not think like we do. My kids don’t even ask me if they can stay in the car anymore because they know my response…”If I leave you in the car, mom may get arrested”, even though they are ages 9 and 7 and would be perfectly safe in the car by themselves for a reasonable period of time. Bottom line–I don’t want to risk it.
Katie – let me get this straight. You want Lenore to stop blogging about the government’s attempts to *criminalize* the actions of parents with respect to their children, with respect to a situation that can affect *millions* of parents, because you find it carcentric (which I’m assuming offends you, or something?)
You are aware that’s just like helicopter parenting logic, the kind that says that because *you* don’t like something, everyone one else has to stop doing it? The kind of situation this entire blog is about? I suggest that either you find a “Safe place” to go, *or* when when you read the first sentence in the post that defines that it’s about a subject that somehow offends you, STOP READING!
Not all subjects that get blogged about here will be about subjects that affect all readers. I don’t live in Rhode Island – heck, I don’t even live in the USA, but I’ll still read about the abject stupidity of the senators of that state and even maybe suggest ways to try to push back. If I’m not interested, I’ll skip that posting, all the while recognizing that for many parents it may be a burning issue.
What is cause of the tragedy that could happen? Is it that the child is alone or is it being in the car? If it’s being in the car then just have your child stand outside the car (if possible). If it’s being alone, i.e., unsupervised and unwatched, think of where that thinking could lead. Could you be endangering your child when you sleep since you can’t see them? Could they sit in another room watching TV while you’re in the kitchen cooking? Could they even go outside your home without you being outside with them? It’s an impossibility to physically see your child 24/7, yet it’s not a far stretch to imagine future legislation that requires just that. And then how was age 8 determined to be the cutoff age?
“If it’s being in the car then just have your child stand outside the car (if possible).”
Or bring a foldable garden chair for them to sit on. With a cupholder for their drink, of course. Summer is coming, might as well make it a picnic 😛
When my daughter was smaller — between 5 and 8 — I would leave her in the car while I ran a short errand (pick up a prescription, run in for milk and bread, etc.) if she was reading or didn’t want to come in. I always told her that if someone was talking to her or trying to get her to open the door to let them know that her mom was right back. Even if it was a police officer!
It’s a little disconcerting that I can drive within 2 states in any direction and possibly be in violation of a law without even knowing it.
Katie, feel free to introduce other topics that relate to Free Range Kids and FR Parenting. Sometimes Lenore blogs about someone’s story/topic they’ve shared in the comments.
I’ll start: Usually my 5th grade boy walks home by himself on Mondays, while I have only let my 3rd grade girl walk home with her brother on Fridays. Today, my son’s pulled hamstring compelled me to pick them up from school, but my daughter wanted to walk. So she did, alone. I even went to run a quick errand, knowing I’d beat her home since the walk is over a mile and she tends to dawdle, collecting shells and rocks and interesting trash along the way! I’m planning next year when my son is at a different school to have her walk home alone on a regular basis, but worry that she’ll be subject to more questions from “concerned adults” since she is female. Has anyone else encountered this, and what did you do about it?
Hi Diane–
When my daughter was in second grade, she went to camp in the town where I worked. she got out a half an hour before me so i wanted to let her walk from the camp to my office and maybe stop in the shops along the way. Having read so much about how parents were being arrested for letting their small children be out and about alone, i called the police with what i prefaced with “a ridiculous question.” I asked if there was any problem with my daughter being out and about on her own and was assured it was a matter of discretion. It doesn’t stop the busy bodies — but it’s a start. My daughter knew that when she encountered a busy body that she was not doing anything illegal. And, i knew i wouldn’t be arrested waiting for my daughter to show up after camp. on occasion, shop-keepers and well-meaning adults would ask where her mom was and she confidently replied “at work!”
On the second day, she got a little turned around and told a man she was lost. She gave him my phone number and he called. He was a little perplexed when i asked him if they saw a landmark – i told him to send her towards it and she would find the office. He seemed a little perplexed that i didn’t tell them to wait right there — but she showed up a few minutes later so he must have sent her on her way in the right direction. 🙂 She was 8 after all and the town is tiny — one main street with a river on one side and a college campus on the other.
An interesting thing about the hot-car-death thing is the way legislators ignore their own role in causing it. Hot car deaths were very, very rare until car-seats were turned to be rear-facing and kids were banned from sitting in the front seat (which in turn was an effect of air-bags being mandated). Not to say whether those decisions were right or wrong, but legislators are way too oblivious of the fact that when you ban or mandate something to prevent one danger, there will inevitably be unintended consequences that may well create new dangers. For instance, the proposed law might well impel parents to leave a child home alone younger than their best judgment would have it when running an errand.
Love the photo. The grin on that girl’s face is saying “I can get out of this in 2.0 seconds.”
Sadly what used to be ‘only in America’ now reaches Australia in a couple of months.
All the best and keep socking it to them.
Thanks, Jen, for sharing your experience. We live smack in the middle of one of the largest cities in America, but I still feel like in many ways it’s as safe as the small town in which I grew up. Except for the heavy vehicle traffic, of course.
Diane–
In many ways, I think cities are safer…more people around to help if need be. 🙂
Good luck!
The whole culture we live in is extremely disconnected from what is really important. They are highly stressed and rushing from place to place . They don’t think of the consequences and risk of leaving children alone . It only takes one incident to put a child at risk and if the child is alone it is at risk to all the elements and dangers of this world and there are many . The abduction of a child left alone exist and if the child is taken then the parent will live with that forever .
I can’t help but wonder how many of these same lawmakers voted against, or spoke out against, the soda/junk food bans. I can only imagine that the amount of empirical data regarding a child’s diet and the effects on their short-term and long-term health completely dwarfs any empirical data there might be on some of these so-called “child safety” issues. Yet, despite all this, people and politicians continually rise up against any suggestion of making school lunches healthier, banning vending machines, or child services stepping in when someone reports a morbidly obese child. As a society, we are even loathe to label such obesity as child abuse.
I’m not saying I agree or disagree. I just find it interesting that letting my child wait in a car for five minutes while I run in to grab toilet paper is considered more abusive than allowing that same child daily venti extra Carmel frappaccinos when they already weigh more than a high school JV line backer.
A column from my local newspaper. It’s nice to know that there are more sane voices out there.
http://poststar.com/news/opinion/columns/wdoolittle/column-kids-can-t-be-made-safe-through-laws/article_21cf7c7b-2e1e-5e2a-98f5-d1371aad2391.html
I’d say this is more a problem of government has a tendency to be ever growing- if you had professionals the legislators should have ceased to be needed decades ago but people can’t enough having legislators. So naturally they want to show they are needed by regulating smaller and smaller things.
I have trouble getting worked up about this sort of thing. First off, because I didn’t leave my kid alone in the car (easier to accomplish with only one, things might have been different had I been marshaling a litter.)
I mean, yes, it’s true that “persons with authority” might have a different interpretation of “significant risk of injury”, but… the child abuse and neglect statutes ALREADY have that sort of language in them, so if I had authorities who felt that leaving children alone in cars, absent other circumstances, is indication of child neglect, then I’d be in trouble even without this sort of law.
I notice that there’s an urban assumption in the commentary. There are dangers in (and out) of cars besides carjackers and heat. We get bears and mountain lions (oh my!), and there was a nationally-reported case a few years back of people trying to follow their GPS-navigation electronics on seasonal roads during the winter, who then got stuck. The parents tried (unsuccessfully) to walk out to summon help.
The fact is, adopting a rule that parents are always right and government should butt out would be wrong. There ARE people who are incapable or unwilling to properly care for children, pretty much at all or in any way. There are also people who do just fine, but need to have some rules drawn out to mark limits. This does not mean that any rules drawn out are correct or should be set in stone, but having them present is a benchmark. Put a helmet on your kid if they ride a bike in the street? Yeah, OK. Put a seatbelt on your kid, and put them in a proper restraint before driving around with them? Yeah, OK. These are things that mostly didn’t happen when I was a kid, but do happen now. It’s hard to point to anywhere that these have made things worse for people, beyond the notion of freedom. Yeah, you no longer have the freedom to not do these things, if you don’t want to be hassled by Johnny Law. So? How has this loss of freedom actually impacted you, other than ideologically?
So many laws are based on false premises. Only yesterday the President spoke at a Journalists’ Award Dinner held by Syracuse U. in Washington D.C. asking journalists to hold lawmakers accountable for digging deeper to get to the facts and the truth.
And yet just last month, the same President signed The International Megan’s Law which is based on a fallacy from 1986 cited in a pop culture magazine. And never, ever, in all the intervening years was that error even once fact-checked–not even by the Supreme Court’s then Adjutant General, who has now risen to be a Supreme Court Justice in his own right (or wrong, as the case may be). .
The Longo Fallacy remains in place today as the Golden Fallacy That Wrecked a Million Lives, the Longo Fallacy of 1986. No one dares question it because, if they did, the entire house of cards would come crashing down around the ears of every Congressman in the country, and several prominent members of the Supreme Court as well, going all the way back to 1994
“Oh! What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”
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