SYDNEY (XINHUA) – After a three-year-old child was forgotten in her pre-school bus for more than six hours in the Australian state of Queensland, disbelief and widespread calls for investigation have permeated the nation.
The young girl was found unconscious in a bus parked outside her pre-school on a hot summer day in Rockhampton in Central Queensland, where temperatures topped out at just under 30 degrees Celsius.
The young girl was rushed to hospital, where she is now in a stable condition. The child’s grandmother Pamela Parker spoke out on Thursday, saying that the family had many questions that they have yet to be given answers for.
“There were procedures and protocols put in place by the Department of Education (to prevent incidents like this). Why weren’t they followed?” said Parker to local news outlet ABC News.
Education Minister for Queensland Grace Grace expressed her disbelief and condolences to the family and the community in a statement. “Families need to have peace of mind that when they send their children off to school, kindy or day care, they will come home safe … This simply should not have happened.”
She added that the Queensland Police Service had already launched an investigation into the incident.
Despite the incident seeming to many a one-off accident, the phenomenon has proven all too common in Australia.
Kidsafe Victoria, an independent, non-profit organisation dedicated to the prevention of unintentional death and injury to children, estimated that every year as many as 5,000 children are rescued from unattended cars.
Expert in attention and memory from Queensland University’s School of Psychology David Sewell said situations like this don’t “necessarily happen through neglect or wickedness” on part of the parent or caretaker, but are rooted in capacity limits in our working memory.
“A lot of the research shows that people’s ability to act on a future intention is remarkably poor. Particularly when we’re trying to do something else at the time, and especially an attention demanding activity, like driving,” he told Xinhua yesterday.
Sewell suggested doing something like placing a bag on the back seat of a car or bus so the driver is forced to turn around before exiting the vehicle.
“It can come down to just a few very simple steps to acknowledge that our memory, despite what our good intentions might be, is fallible, and will fail us at times.”
