But you’d have to also factor in the forward/rear facing factor, which is the other thing keeping kids in the back seat (that you cannot rear face with an airbag.)
Sure. More data would help.
That is not a fact, it’s just your (somewhat sexist) assertion. Every parent realizes pretty quick that there’s not much you can do when the baby is crying in the back seat. Another poster also pointed out that you might actually be more distracted having the baby in front since you can actually interact with it there. At least in back you know there’s nothing you can do about so you just wait for a stop light or pull over.
If you had bothered to read my posts, you’d see I was basing this on several rides with a Mom.
Sounds like there’s no need for more studies then, you’ve already collected sufficient data. :rolleyes:
Unless…maybe it wasn’t because she’s a mom, but because she’s a woman. I mean, you know how women are just plain bad drivers and distracted by anything, amirite?
Umm, no, I have said several times that what we need are more studies.
Umm, maybe because she was distracted?
Women are generally better drivers than men, as they get Road Rage less often.
Obviously not written by a parent who lives in Minnesota (or anywhere else it snows, slushes, freezing rains or is just bitter cold for several months a year) and is dealing with daycare parking lots in January. My shoes sort of needed to stay on my feet six months a year in order not to freeze when taking my kid out of the seat. (Nor, do I imagine, does the writer live in Phoenix or another city with two hundred degree pavement in the Summer).
My purse still goes in the back seat though, and my kids are sixteen and seventeen now. 
Well that is exhausting research I must say. Published and peer reviewed I assume?
No, which is why *I think they need further studies. *
You said it was a fact. I suggested earlier that you’re on safe ground saying more study is needed. It’s when you start proclaiming facts not in evidence that you run into issues.
Absolutely. If you really want to kill people, make the child seats SHINY.
Several more kids have died since I originally posted this OP. A judge’s baby died in Hot Springs AR because the parent forgot it was in the car.
The pressure pad sensor system I suggested has already been done in other applications. Here’s a chair pad for $36 that sounds an alarm if a elderly patient stands up out of their chair. Letting caregivers know before the person falls and injuries themselves. $36 plus the cost of the alarm to protect a senior from injury.
http://www.walgreens.com/store/c/lumex-fast-alert-pressure-sensor-chair-pad-only/ID=prod6255422-product?ext=gooHome_Health_Care_Solutions_PLA_Patient_Alarm_prod6255422_pla&adtype=pla&kpid=sku6217719&sst=61bd491f-1a22-423e-940f-2b901c732764&kpid=sku6217719
Yet we can’t modify something like this to save a baby? No one cares enough to change the logic circuit? Instead of alarming when pressure is released, it would alarm when the car door opened and there was 10 lbs or more pressure on the pad. Simple as pie.
Is my idea absolutely foolproof? Probably not. But it would still save a bunch of lives cheaply. It’s a lot better than nothing and just hoping a busy mom or dad remembers the baby sitting backwards in the rear seat of the car.
I think you’re right. I have no idea why you’re getting so much resistance. I saw a study that said essentially, “before laws mandating children be in the back seat, there were about 30 MORE deaths per year from children being in the front seat than in crashes that would’ve been survivable had they been in the back. However, there are now about 42 MORE deaths from hyperthermia/hypothermia from being left in the car that would have never happened, presumably, if the children had been in the front.”
Basically, the study said it’s a wash (so maybe the numbers were more like 36 and 42). I’m not sure the source or methodology, but it seems reasonable to me because for a traffic crash to have fatalities, it’s got to be pretty horrific, so it stands to reason that it isn’t usually going to make much difference if you’re shotgun or in the back seat.
Aren’t the current back seat laws mostly from the emotional reaction Americans had to a few well-publicized baby decapitations from airbags when seated in rear-facing baby seats when airbags deployed in low speed crashes? I remember my grandmother freaking out over a story of a baby’s head going right out the window in a parking lot fender-bender, around the mid-1980’s.
Why would a camera staring at the rear facing car seat with a dash mount monitor not work? Watch the baby sleep drool or fuss when it is there and a quick reminder to take it with.