Latest news - man forgets wife in Gas station !!

Read this on CNN today :
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ROME, Italy (Reuters) -- A Macedonian man left his wife at an Italian service station and only realized he had driven off without her six hours later.
The couple, who were travelling with their 4-year-old daughter, pulled over for petrol in the coastal city of Pesaro as they were heading back to their home to Germany.
After filling the tank, the husband drove away -- without noticing that his 30-year-old wife had got out of the car to go to the toilet.
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Is this possible ? Is his wife so quite ? How can one not know that a person is missing from his car ? Or is he so used to ignoring his wife that he did not notice her absence ? Or did he place her in his SEP field ? ( Somebody Else's Problem, according to Hitchhikers Guide the easiset way to make something disappear is put it in somebody else's problem field, then one will not notice it even if it is right in front of one's eyes as the brain would just block it out !!)

anyway, thought this was really weird.