RBCal

A woman accidentally put her baby through the airport x-ray machine at LAX. Some people should not be allowed to be parents or grandparents.

annw

Quick, someone go to her house and remove her microwave oven.

AAFrequentFlyer

Here is a link to the story:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la...home-headlines

mjz

Did the TSA not notice a baby was being placed on the belt and entering the xray? They are usually standing at the opening of the xray barking orders at everyone.

And yes, some people should not be allowed to be parents.

Karen246

Obviously the staff member who was monitoring what is being put through the Xray machine was not paying attention to their job - did they get a performance warning...or did they get off scott free

flanneruk

Is it their job to STOP things going through the machine?

Surely they're there to make sure things DO go through? I can't imagine common sense features in their job description.

FainaAgain

Grandma hardly spoke English. If this was her very first flight, she was very nervous, of course. And if she put the baby down to remove the shoes, did she even notice it was a conveyor belt and it moved?

I think it's one of those freak accidents, nothing more.

And yes, Annw, please visit her house, remove the microwave, and make sure there are no ferrets in the house

mrwunrfl

See, this is how natural selection works.

motorguy

What do you expect of the geniuses who work for the TSA? They were probably so busy making sure that passengers take off their shoes and don't pack toothpaste that they were not paying attention to the belt.

Carrybean

"There's an obligation on the traveler to use some common sense,"

Well, I'd have to agree with the above statement.

berry

"Officials, who declined to release the 56-year-old woman's name, said she spoke Spanish and apparently did not understand English."

Another good reason for people to learn English.

Wednesday

no radiografíe a bebé

Kathyngs

"Some people should not be allowed to be parents or grandparents."

Obviously written by someone who has never been confused in a foreign country or made an embarrassing mistake. A little tolerance for non-English-speakers goes a long way. After all, how many languages do most of us know?

If I keep my shoes on, TSA spots them from yards away; they should be able to notice a baby in a bin. But even with signs and precautions, accidents will happen.

Carrybean

Confused in a foreign country? The agents last time I went through Miami could barely speak English.

JBHapgood

The screeners are so busy enforcing a continually-increasing, ever-changing multitude of arbitrary rules dealing with specific minutiae (shoes, nail clippers, toothpaste tubes) that they just don't have time to exercise common sense or to look for anything that's not in today's Official List of Threats. The screeners didn't see the baby because it wasn't one of the things they're supposed to be looking for. The solution will most likely be a small patch, in the form of a directive from TSA management to add "babies" to the list of things to check.

Whatever you might think of the parents, this story merely demonstrates that the TSA's bureaucracy and its entire approach to "security" is incompetently administered, ineptly implemented and utterly worthless. The TSA's management seems to believe that they're dealing with an enemy as inept and bumbling as they are. That is obviously a fatal flaw.

"Security" means more than myopic obsession with a selected set of past and potential terrorist threats. It needs to be comprehensive, without leaving obvious gaps that encourage common threats such as theft and loss of property-- and clueless parents who put their babies on the conveyor belt. But TSA management doesn't seem either capable of or interested in recognizing this reality.

No, they don't need rules to follow about checking for babies. If the screeners were really doing their job as part of an effective security system, they would have noticed the baby before it got zapped. A screener should, after all, be noticing and responding to things that are out of whack even if they're not on today's authorized list of threats du jour. But I don't blame the screeners for failing to notice the baby. I blame an inept bureaucracy that prevents the screeners from noticing babies in the wrong place-- or from noticing numerous other things that could be vitally important.

RBCal

Every foreign country I've flown through has x-ray machines. Also, virtually all signs at LAX are in both English and Spanish and many of the people who work there speak both languages.

I still think that the grandparent is at fault and yes she should not handle children let alone have had them in the first place.

Carrybean

Well said, RBCal however it's always easier to throw blame on any entity other than yourself for your own stupidity.