I’m reading this morning’s news story of the Florida father who was arrested after his toddler son died in the backseat of the father’s pickup after being locked in for eight hours. I’m trying to figure out how to design a device that would text you if you inadvertently leave Junior in the car. So far the only thing I can think of is measuring CO[sub]2[/sub] levels inside the vehicle, but that may not work if the window were open even an inch or two—I’m not sure. Intuition tells me that there must be at least a dozen different ways to achieve this, but I can’t think of a foolproof one off the top of my head. How can it be done?
I think one way to do this would be for the child and parent to both wear trackers. Anytime the distance between the two tracker devices exceeds, say, 30 feet (in other words, child is in car, but parent is not), a warning text would be sent.
A baby has to go in a car seat. Car seat has to be buckled in. No one leaves a seat belt buckled when you exit a vehicle. Even if the baby isn’t in the car seat, the warning would, at least, get you thinking about IF there’s a child in the car.
Babies do not have to go in a car seat. We have fools driving around all the time with kids and infants not belted in any manner. Yes it’s the state law to do so.
Also bogus alarms are soon ignored. It’s the old ‘boy who cried wolf too often’ thing.
Hi tech fixes for a low tech problem seldom last long.
Nobody leaves their own seat belt buckled when they leave the car, but I can’t see why anyone would unbuckle the car seat. Parents of babies often leave the seats buckled in the car constantly.
And any solution would have to be one built into the car, without requiring any activity at all from the parents (such as downloading an app or wearing a tracker). Nobody accidentally leaves a kid in the car-- Cases like this are all from parents who did it because they didn’t know the danger in the first place.
Another (maybe too high-tech) solution would be to have a weight sensor on the baby seat. When there is weight in the baby seat, but not in the driver’s seat, *and *the car doors have opened/closed, the alarm sounds.
…yeah, it’s overdoing the tech a bit.
You could have something that sounds when the car is off and there is a child in a car seat, or just anyone left in the car. I think this should be very simple, probably just software for most modern cars that have seat belt sensors already. The weight sensors may not be sensitive enough to tell the difference between a empty child seat and one with a very small child in it, but the point is to have it go off and require manual intervention to stop it. So even if it goes off every time you get out of the car with an empty child seat it’s still a reminder. It has to be difficult enough to turn off that it won’t become an automatic response, so you can’t just have it be reset with a key fob.
I like the tracker concept above also, doesn’t require any changes to the car, but it’s easy to forget to put it on and keep it charged. Nothing will be good enough unless it’s somewhat inconvenient to use and forces a check.
A little more complex is just having heat sensors and automatic venting in cars. But that would eventually fail if a battery is dead, or fuel runs out to power an air conditioner in very hot situations, or heater in very cold situations. Even if you have a low fuel/low battery alarm there’s too much of a chance those things will fail when battery and fuel are low.
Something much simpler would be a cellular device with a camera that detects motion, body heat, and temperature heat and calls the owner when problem conditions are detected. The same old problem of automatic resetting behavior without thought could still be an issue.
Another solution - not what the OP is looking for, but could still help - would just design baby seats and air bags so that baby seats can be put in the front seat, where they would be much more visible to the driver and harder to forget/overlook.
Actually, it would be relatively simple to have a car seat that connects to a modern car’s safety interlock system wirelessly, similar to how tire pressure monitoring systems (TPMS) do, which sounds a buzzer and doesn’t allow the car to be locked as long as a buckle engagement or pressure sensor in the car seat indicates occupancy, and sounds the vehicle alarm if the vehicle is closed for several minutes with an occupant still in the car seat and the driver not in proximity. An on-driver monitor (say, a fob on the car key ring) could be used in the case of older cars prior to implementation of the standard. This would require some kind of industry standard interface so that all child car seats and cars are able to communicate. There are other concepts but this would probably be the easiest and cheapest to implement, and could be done with hardware comparable to a Rasperry Pi. The most difficult part is getting auto manufacturers to agree upon and implement a communications standard for this.
Stranger
Apparently there are already devices that do this. The linked one apparently senses the weight of a child in a car seat, and alerts you via your phone if it senses weight and if the distance between your phone and the sensor exceeds 15 feet. Google shows there are many other products that attempt to do this, including some built in to the car itself (eg. the 2017 GM Acadia).
–Mark
This is a link to a well-known, Pulitizer Prize-winning article from The Washington Post on these cases. The article describes one device that was developed in 2000 that used weight sensors under the baby and a keychain alarm to be carried by the parent and then the article describes why it’s not commercially feasible. "The device still isn’t on the shelves. The inventors could not find a commercial partner willing to manufacture it. One big problem was liability. If you made it, you could face enormous lawsuits if it malfunctioned and a child died. But another big problem was psychological: Marketing studies suggested it wouldn’t sell well.
The problem is this simple: People think this could never happen to them."
Actually, a lot of incidents are a result of a distracted parent or guardian leaving a sleeping child in a car seat, and while education is also important in preventing this situation, many times it occurs just due to fatigue or distraction. But I would agree that tying the alert to a cell phone is not reliable or sufficient. If the vehicle is outside of cellular range, or the phone is turned on silent or off, or a person who is not the primary caregiver is driving then the alert will not help. It is better to alert the driver directly, prevent the car from locking, and set off the car alarm to alert the driver or people nearby after several minutes of inactivity after the driver has left the vicinity and left the doors closed.
Which is the same reason many people didn’t wear seatbelts or buy cars with advanced active protection features until the government started mandating them. Such systems, implemented on a wide scale, would only add slightly to the cost of current vehicles (which largely already have the necessary capability) and car seats, and the cost of the additional features is offset by not having to have to waste medical and law enforcement resources on dealing with the consequences, not to mention the emotional and financial toll to parents of having such an indicent occur.
Stranger
Moderator Action
This is ending up more ideas and opinions than factual, so let’s move it over to IMHO (from GQ).
Keep a stuffed toy bear or something in the car seat when the baby is not with you. When you put the baby into the car seat, move the stuffed toy to the front seat where it’s easily visible.
Who is the target market for this solution? Most parents are simply unaware of a need for such a thing, because the idea that they might accidentally leave their child in a car is not within the scope of their thoughts.
Car manufacturers could be compelled to install something in every car, or baby seat manufacturers could be compelled to install something in the seat, but I doubt they would - partly because it’s an additional cost feature to mitigate an incredibly tiny risk (albeit one with a very severe outcome), and perhaps also because provision of such a device implies responsibility - if the device is provided, and fails, the manufacturer is now to blame for the death.
Any solution that isn’t baked in at the manufacturing level will be prone to failure of the same general sort that leads to these accidental deaths in the first place - parents get distracted and break their routine (leaving children in the car), so they will also get distracted and break their routine of activating the safety device, or replacing its batteries, or testing that it works.
I just saw on the TV news that Tesla is introducing an optional feature that would automatically turn on the vehicle’s AC if the internal temperature reaches a preset level. That doesn’t sound like a very feasible plan—unless it also turns the engine on, the battery would be drained in a matter of minutes.
Keeping in mind that Tesla autos are all-electric, what engine would you be turning on?
We really need a device to remind parents that they have a child?
Yes. Someone with a stronger stomach than me can link to the studies.
Thee is a certain risk associated with being a baby born to stupid or incompetent parents. It will never be zero. Deal with it. The incidence is already so close to zero, that when there is one, it makes the AP wire and there is a forum thread about it.
There is a huge cost to zero-tolerance. If there is one unpleasant outcome per decade, the cost of reducing that to zero becomes astronomical per-incident, owing to the law of diminishing returns.
What has been the cost, in terms of your personal liberty, to reduce the threat of terrorism from a very tiny number to some imaginary or unattainable zero?