Those stories break my heart. They're so preventable and the hot-car-baby syndrome is so unfailingly deadly. I think I was reading in the paper two weeks ago that Texas has the most of those deaths anywhere each year during heat season. There was one here in the DFW area late last week.

I'm not sure parents are getting worse, Slip. I think they're just busier and more distracted, particularly if both are trying to work. Now that I think of that, I think that probably does qualify for "worse," at least where the poor, innocent victims, the babies, are concerned.

I try and keep my sympathies in place for both the babies and parents. When mama or daddy are woefully sleep deprived, distracted and harried, which is how parents tend to be under even the best of circumstances when they have small babies or toddlers, I can see how circumstances could make such an accident possible when all factors collude against the distracted parent and hence the baby. What I cannot see is how any parent ever continues to live on after that accidentally happens.