Infant left in car: What is "forgotten baby syndrome"?

These are tragedies that can happen in any family. A two-year-old child was found dead this Thursday, June 26, in a car parked at the Istres airbase (Bouches-du-Rhône), where he had been left behind by his father, we learned from the Aix-en-Provence prosecutor's office.

The father parked in the morning at his workplace and in the middle of the afternoon, his wife called him and told him that their child was not at the nursery, according to the prosecutor's office.

"Realizing that he had forgotten it, he rushed to his vehicle and found his son unconscious," said Aix-en-Provence prosecutor Jean-Luc Blachon.

Despite attempts to resuscitate him, the child died. Emergency services were only able to "confirm that the child showed signs of dehydration, which, according to the initial autopsy findings, was the cause of death," the prosecutor added.

The father was taken into custody for manslaughter. This type of accident, for which there are no official figures, occurs several times a year: last Friday, a child just over a year old was hospitalized in a serious condition after being left in a car parked in the sun in Ussel (Corrèze).

Leaving a young child alone in a car can quickly become dangerous: according to the Ministry of the Interior , "temperatures inside a vehicle can rise excessively quickly." "Even though an outside temperature may be considered moderate, around 15 to 20°C, it can rise to 45°C in less than half an hour in a car," the ministry warns on its website. It adds that "with an outside temperature of 26°C, ten minutes is enough to cause the death of a young child in a car."

These dramatic consequences are explained by the high vulnerability of infants to heatstroke. As the Ministry of Health website explains, "the infant's body is rich in water; its fragility is therefore maximal" when it is dehydrated, which can kill it .

In 2009, the Consumer Safety Commission, a since-abolished independent French administrative authority, published an opinion on "forgotten baby syndrome," a term it claims originated in the United States. It is "characterized by the almost always identical scenario of the parent who, on the way to work, forgets to drop off their child with their childminder or daycare."

But how can we explain that every year, parents completely ignore the presence of their child in their car when leaving it? This "forgotten baby syndrome" was examined by David Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida, in a study published in 2019. According to him, when a person "goes into 'autopilot' mode, habitual behaviors, such as getting ready "Coming to work and going straight to the office on a normal day can cause a parent to lose consciousness of the child in the car," a university statement said.

This is then a "prospective memory failure," the one that reminds us of what we must do in the future. "We tend to say 'that kind of thing wouldn't happen to me,' but it can happen to anyone because at that moment, the father is in a state of hypnosis, a state of autopilot where the unconscious takes control, and that's why he doesn't realize it," explained Ilana Waserscztajn, a clinical psychologist, on BFMTV in 2022 .

Certain factors contribute to this failure, according to David Diamond, such as stress, lack of sleep, or a distracting phone call. "The absence of visual or verbal reminders, such as a sleeping child or a diaper bag," increases the risk of "the child losing consciousness in the back of a car," adds the University of South Florida press release.

"We spend our time running, we don't take the time to breathe, to stop," Ilana Waserscztajn also noted in 2022.

To help parents, David Diamond advocates for the implementation of "integrated systems to detect children left in the car." Some systems already exist, such as the Waze navigation app , which offers a "child reminder" option.