Sorry lady, but this ain't the window's fault; it's yours.

[CanuckAmok]

Does the term "contributory negligence" not seem applicable here? This dumb-ass left an toddler and a young child alone in a running vehicle for fifteen minutes.

Dumb-ass. Dumb-ass. Dumb-ass.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2007/02/22/power-windows.html


"...The two-year-old Calgary girl died Tuesday after being left with her six-year-old brother in a running Chevrolet Blazer while their mother ran an errand.

No charges will be laid, acting Det. Andrew MacLeod of Calgary police said Wednesday..."


How is it you need a license to operate a car or own a dog, but any dipshit with genitalia can have a child?

[mainegreen]

1. Power windows had 0% contribution to their deaths.

100% on the parents. Never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever leave small children alone in cars. We need to start tattooing this on new parents foreheads.

[Arkansas Granny]

16. I agree with the premise of parental responsibility. I did, however,

see a report on power windows and children that offered an easy solution. Instead of having the controls on the armrest where a child could activate it and hold it down with their leg or knee while climbing around in the car, they could mount them on the vertical door panel and they would still be easy to access, but not pressed so easily by accident. I realize that no amount of safety devices can compensate for neglectful parents, but this would seem to be an easy solution without inconveniencing anyone.

[Rabrrrrrr]

31. Hey - I like that idea!

That would keep me from accidentally opening or closing the window with my forearm when I rest on the arm rest thingy.

[fudge stripe cookays]

28. Yes!

Automatically reversing if something gets in the way? What horseshit!

What if what gets in the way of the window you're furiously trying to roll up is the arm of someone attempting to carjack you? I'LL TAKE THE WINDOW GOING UP, THANKS!

What a freaking moron this woman was.

[lost-in-nj]

2. nothing but

:cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:


it is uncomprehendable.....



lost

[Scarlett17]

3. We had one of those in Detroit in December

The grandmother was driving the car at the time--with her radio blaring a religious CD. People on the street tried to get her attention, but she couldn't hear them or the 3-year-old girl in the backseat. Just horrible.

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Top_News/20061223-022255-5017r/

edit: typo

[Redbear]

4. Car safety devices exist to protect us from human negligence

The proposal the group makes seems quite reasonable. The same technology with garage doors saves many lives and many more injuries.

[CanuckAmok]

6. It does, but....

...there is a point at which people shuold be expected to assume some level of responsibility for themselves and the people in their care.

I owned a Saab a few years ago that had a bright yellow triangle sticker inside and at the top corner of each door. It stated: "CAUTION, DOOR EDGE IS POINTED".

My humble opinion is that if you are so close to a car door that you can read a warning label printed on the inside of it, you deserve to be horribly maimed if you don't notice it's "pointed".

For christ's sake, a car is an inherently dangerous environment; it weighs tons, it's full of explosive and flammable fluids, electrical sources, sharp edges, and can be propelled at a dangerous speed. You could wrap this dipshit's blazer in a 4" thick layer of bubble-wrap and it would still be an unsafe place to leave a child unattended. Not to mention that it's just stupid to leave any child unattended in any public area. This woman is a fucking dipshit.

We can "idiot-proof" until the cows come home, but idiocy itself will never be eradicated. This dipshit should have been charged with negligence causing death, and the surviving child put in foster care until dipshit passed some basic parenting classes. AFAIC, she has proven herself not capable of responsible child-rearing, and therefore forfeits her right to unsupervised parenthood until she redeems herself.

Dipshit. Dipshit. Dipshit. Dipshit.

If she files suit against GM because of this, I will personally fly to Calgary and club her to death, for the greater good.

[Blue Diadem]

13. While I agree the child should not have been left in the car alone,

the window issue is a problem. We had it happen with our elderly dog(a large lab) who had ridden with us for years and years. DH normally used the window lock option but either forgot that day or accidently hit that button after he'd adjusted the window for the dog. I just happened to look back and saw my poor dog's neck being squeezed..his nail was holding the button and he was struggling so hard to pull his head free. Luckily he wasn't injured by it but I shudder to think what might have happened if there had just been one of us in the car concentrating on driving on the expressway.

This has been a known problem for years with car windows, just as it was with garage doors.

[Ilsa]

5. Maybe this is an older car because all of the new ones

I've seen this year use the Volvo-style electric window controls. To roll them up, the toggle has to be lifted. We use the master window locking system in our vehicles so the kids can't roll them down except from the front seat.

The parent is responsible. There have been other stories of this in the media. I feel sorry for her, but she should have been more vigilant in taking care of her young children.

[wildhorses]

7. wow...i just had this same conversation with my mother today

to put it bluntly...

i queried as to the fact that just cos one knows how to fuck does NOT mean that one knows how to be a parent....


yeah, i am pretty open with my mom...

hell, we are both OLD at this point:rofl:

[petronius]

8. This quote made me wretch:

"Why do we as a society care so little for our kids that injuries continue to be the leading cause of death for them?"

Sorry, Doc - it's not society that's leaving children alone in running automobiles, it's stupid people.

Personally, I don't see any reason for punishing this mother - I'm sure she's suffering more than I can imagine - but using her a poster child for 'those who've been let down by society' is bullshit...

[CanuckAmok]

9. What's worse...

The TV story that accompanied the web article was all about how "unsafe" the vehicle is, not about how fucking stupid it is to leave your kids unattended in a car.

When they posted a slick graphic with the number of American power-window related fatalities since 1960 as a whopping 50, that would tend to suggest that power windows are for all intents ad purposes not dangerous for all but the 50 most stupid people to have lived in the last 47 years, or their children.

Perhaps a more suitable graphic would have been a slick graph indicating the number of negligent parents whose stupidity has cased death or injury to their children.

[TommyO]

26. Kids and Cars from Kansas is mentioned in the article

I decided to pay a little visit to their website and the vast majority of the accidents they have listed on the website are a result of parents leaving their unattended children in cars.

Modifying window controls so they can't accidentally be closed is a good thing, putting sensors on the windows and rolling them back when obstructed is overkill and actually a safety hazard if you need to close the windows quickly to prevent somebody from getting into your car (it does happen).

My advice to Kids and Cars: focus on educating parents to always take their children with them when they leave their cars.

[PVnRT]

10. OK....

There seems an awful lot of anger directed at the mother here based on a news blurb that is itself poorly written. It doesn't even mention the cause of death, though I think we can assume it had something do with a child being caught and strangling in a car window.

How do we know that this wasn't meant to be a quick run-in-run-out that got bogged down to 15 minutes? I'll accept that mom should have done things like turn the car off and flip the child lock on the windows on, but you people are acting like she's no different from Hitler.

And should I even point out how strange it is that we have liberals here arguing against car manufacturers adding a safety feature that actually does make a lot of sense?

[Kutjara]

11. I'm not sure adding another safety feature does make sense.

As CanuckAmok notes, there have only been about 50 power-window related deaths since 1960. Contrast that with the 500 people per year who strangle to death on their bedclothes (source www.nsc.org) or the 300 who accidentally drown in the bath, and automobile windows seem pretty low down on the table of lethal weapons.

There are also possible dangers with installing windows that automatically lower in the presence of an obstruction. What if an assailant is attacking you or your children in your car? You wouldn't be able to roll up the windows to keep them out. It reminds me of the spate of cases of carjacking in the UK a few years ago. The criminals were targeting Mercedes Benz cars because MB had just introduced a feature that unlocked all the doors in the event of a crash (making it easier to get out of a wrecked car quickly). The thieves would run into unwary MB drivers, then drag their victims out of their now unlocked cars, and rob or assault them. Great safety feature.

I think before we add yet another pointless feature to cars, we assess whether we're protecting ourselves from a small risk by exposing ourselves to a much greater one.

[Blue Diadem]

14. How do the numbers compare? Are there statistics on that?

I know someone who was saved from a robbery/assault by her ability to quickly wind up the window onto his arm..it's something I hadn't thought about.

[kay1864]

17. Agree 100%

Power-window buttons that are lift-only: Good idea.

Power windows that stop on an obstruction: Bad idea. Anyone in a car with an open window would then be at risk. Not even locked doors would help you. And I'm sure the number of assaults in the past 47 years that were stopped by a power window, is WAY higher than 50.

If this "safety feature" were installed (for IDIOTIC NEGLECTFUL PARENTS), thieves and rapists would take advantage of it in a heartbeat.

[Mad_Dem_X]

12. She left her two children alone in the car

The responsibility is HERS, 100%. You DON'T leave little children alone in a car. Period.

[Midlodemocrat]

15. She's only slightly better than Hitler IMHO

Children trust their parents to take care of them. You NEVER, EVER, EVER leave a child in a car for even a nanosecond.

Hell, I still don't leave BabyMidlo in the car and she's ten.

Sheer, unabashed laziness on the mom's part.

[Redbear]

29. So if I have put my three year old in the car and realize I forgot my keys

unless I unstrap her and take her in the house with me while I get the keys I am only slightly better than Hitler?

[CanuckAmok]

18. Well....

"And should I even point out how strange it is that we have liberals here arguing against car manufacturers adding a safety feature that actually does make a lot of sense?"

First of all, many new vehicles are having additional safety features attached to car windows, the most logical, efficient, and cost effective is the "pull up to raise" witch. But the reality is that most people buy used cars, not new ones, and for the next two decades there will be millions of cars on the road that don't have such safety devices.

I'm not sure why being a progressive/liberal automatically means that we believe "big business" is always the cause of our suffering.

We as liberals often discuss the dangers of "dumbing-down" of society, and IMHO, completely idiot-proofing the world is another part of this "dumbing-down". Not only does it teach learned helplessness and allow people to let their attention drift ("I assumed the window-lock was on so I was on my Blackberry when my son fell out of the moving car"), but it sends the message that nothing is our fault. Look at the number of moronic lawsuits that occur every year, from people burning themselves on hot coffee to slamming their hands in car doors. If you are too stupid to sense a cup of coffee is too hot to drink, while you may not necessarily deserve to be scalded, your scalding is pretty much your own fault. And odds are, that unless you're a complete moron, you won't let yourself be scalded a second time.

And, a far less important but still very real fact of these situations is that we, as consumers, end-up absorbing the costs of these lawsuits; we're subsidising them in the prices we pay. So every time John Q Dipshit steers his toboggan into a tree or cuts off his finger with a Ginsu knife and successfully sues the manufacturer, we pay.

There's actually an annual award for stupid disclaimers, and last year's winner was a washing-machine that had a "do not put people inside the washing machine" sticker. The tragedy here isn't that someone was injured while riding in a washing machine and sued the manufacturer, the tragedy is we live in a society where literate adults need to be reminded it's unsafe to get into a washing machine!

[Rabrrrrrr]

21. Liberals are also for INTELLIGENCE, not stupidity and feel-good assholery.

These so-called safety windows are mere feel-good assholery.

CanuckAmok is right - you can't idiot-proof the world, and every extra bit of feel-good safety assholery costs us money. Companies don't pay it for it - we do, with the money that we give the companies.

Liberals should also understand economics. Money doesn't appear ex nihilo - it comes ONLY from people, from OUR pockets, whether it's government money or corporate money.

What's next? A safety device that has a scanner that can tell you when your kid has to pee so that you don't have to run the risk that they won't tell you because they don't want to look up from their DVD in the backseat to tell you they need to pee, and so they wait until it's an emergency, forcing you to drive fast?

Bullshit.

The world cannot be made idiot proof, and liberals look like FUCKING MORONS every time they think they can, and especially every time they actually try to do so.

[Phillycat]

25. Wha??

I'll accept that mom should have done things like turn the car off and flip the child lock on the windows on...

Um, NO. She shouldn't have left the children in the car! Not only is it a stupid-ass thing to do, IT'S ILLEGAL. You never leave children unattended in a vehicle, not even for "half a second". Never ever ever.

[Rabrrrrrr]

19. Jesus fucking Christ - how much more inconvenience do we endure because of stupid fuckbags?

I can't believe this negligent piece of trash isn't being put in jail for life.

"The death of a Calgary toddler only underlines the need for car manufacturers to make power windows safer, says the founder of a U.S. advocacy group."

No, shitbag - it underlines the need to remove ignorant shitpiles from the planet before they have a chance to breed.

[Mad_Dem_X]

20. BRAVO!

Couldn't agree more.

[Rabrrrrrr]

30. Thanks! I salute my fellow intelligent being!

:patriot:

[hedgehog]

22. It used to be very acceptable to leave kids in the car.

As a matter of fact, in England and Ireland, people still leave the baby in a pram outside the shop! I don't think the world has gotten any more dangerous in 40 years. It's just that we hear about every stranger kidnapping in the entire country. Even so, more kids are attacked by family and friends than by strangers! Just look at how scared we've all become - someone up thread insists that we need power windows to prevent rapes!

[Kutjara]

23. Er, no.

People in England generally do not leave kids outside of shops. A number of high-profile child abduction cases in recent years has put a stop to this. In Ireland, you do see prams outside shops in rural areas and small towns, but not in Dublin, Cork or Limerick. The paranoia you speak of is not purely a US phenomena; it's replicated throughout the Western world.

Also, the post about rape above didn't say that "we need power windows to prevent rapes." What it said was, in essence, that the ability to close windows is a useful defense against attack (which may include theft or rape). Installing a "safety" device that enables someone to stop a window from closing just by obstructing it significantly diminishes the safety of vehicle occupants.

Sure there's a lot of paranoia around, but I bet you don't leave all your doors and windows unlocked like they did "in the good old days" either. It is prudent to take sensible precautions.

[hedgehog]

24. I do have two large dogs and I do live in a rural district.

I only lock the doors when I go into the big city and not always then. Oddly enough, some of my neighbors are the most paranoid people on the earth and have a large street light on the side of their house that they leave on all night every night!

[mockmonkey]

27. I wonder

What would have kept the child from engaging the shift lever and the SUV rolled into traffic or a river? What is next? A childproof transmission lever because of some very stupid parents? Nothing is so important that you should leave the kids alone in the car.

I feel sorry for the brother having to witness that.