To all of you thinking my decision is off base, let me clue you in on some details. I live in San Francisco. Our temperature swings from 50 degrees to 80 degrees during the day and rapidly. It can reach 90 degrees inland. So no, I will not leave my child who is an infant, unattended. I will not leave my keys in my car…

Um... flying is still safer than driving. What is your point?

I take a very simple approach. Do I know with certainty where my child is? This is a simple yes or no question. My kid is an infant. If I do not touch or see my child, I do not know where my child is. That is a problem.

“we deal with partly by taking precautions”

Sounds like you don’t have kids.

I do have children. Thanks!

Second hand smoke causes more deaths. I am surprised you did not bring this up, too.

Again, thanks for using general risk to justify leaving your child unattended. I was disappointed you did not bring up risk of earthquakes in CA.

Way to twist my comment out of proportion. The post was about leaving kids unattended. You are expanding it to everyday risk in general.

“The car has the AC on.”

My point is we are talking about the welfare of someone’s life. It is not some theoretical exercise. Shit does not happen most of the time, but when it does, the outcome is life changing (think black swan events). The act of prevention requires such a minimal effort, so I make sure I take the time to do it.

Let’s go through the logic flow:

No, I can not control these situations with 100% certainty. This is where risk mitigation comes in. Take precautions and don’t do stupid things. Get an alarm system for your home. Lock your doors. Don’t leave your child unattended. You know, common sense stuff.

I want to be clear that if a person carjacked your car with you in it and took off with your child, it is not the parent’s fault. There is nothing wrong with sitting in your car with your child.

I don’t leave my keys in the car at any time. I find myself double checking everything before I leave my car. I am paranoid that way. However, I never let my kid out of my sights when we are outside.

“There’s some real quality-of-life and time management improvements that can happen if a parent is occasionally free to leave a kid in a car for 5-15 minute stretches”

Here you go: Acura NSX. Mid engine, v6, manual. The buy it now price is higher than $30K, but I think it can sell just shy of the budget limit.

Just have some common sense. I know, this is easier said than done.

There is absolutely NO , ZERO, NADA reasons to leave a child unattended in a car. If a person does this, they are idiots and should be charged with child endangerment.

Automatic tops scare me senseless. There are way too many parts that can go wrong. I like my convertible tops to be manual.