Virtual soothing in a transportation vehicle is described, in which soothing a passenger in a vehicle may involve receiving monitoring data relevant to the passenger from a plurality of sensors in the vehicle, determining a soothing need or an emergency condition of the passenger based on the monitoring data, and presenting a multimedia message to the passenger that addresses the soothing need or the emergency condition. The multimedia message may be specific to the passenger and relevant to the soothing need or the emergency condition. The multimedia message may exhibit characteristics that enable the passenger to perceive the multimedia message as being verbally generated by a guardian with whom the passenger is personally acquainted.