Forgotten children…in the backseat of your cars
I was listening to the news today about yet another child who died in a locked car, after being mistakenly left in the backseat by her mother.
The video of the devastated mother, crying frantically and guilt-ridden about what had happened, really moved me to think about a solution to this. Was there a way that technology could step in to remind people to take the sleeping kids out of the car before parking?
I first though about some sort of human/heat detection inside the car, which would alarm/notify the driver before they parked and locked the car. Too expensive, and the technology would take ages to be economical enough to put in all cars.
Maybe theres a cheaper solution.
Cars can detect when we dont fasten our seatbelts. So if they can detect a non-fastened state, they can detect a fastened state as well.
How hard would it be for the car to beep a couple of times and refuse to lock itself (in the ignition-off state), if it detected a seatbelt was left in the fastened state ?
sure, the above solution has a couple of assumptions, the biggest being : “people are fastening the seat belts on their kids”. My guess would be that 90% of the times, this is the case.
Baby carriers will not stay on the seat if not fastened. Kids too large for carriers wont stay on the seat if not fastened either. The 10% of the cases where the kid was not fastened, would be by a really negligent parent/guardian, and all the technology in the world cannot help those cases.
What about negative effects of this? Does anyone ever need a seatbelt fastened when exiting and locking the car? Like if you are transporting a CRT monitor or something and want to take a quick break between the trip. Well, maybe it would be a bummer when that day comes, but seriously, how often have you left a seatbelt fastened in your car when it is parked? I’d guess once in a blue blue moon.
What about when you are sitting in the car and trying to lock it before turning on the ignition and starting to drive? Hmm. Maybe it should check for the combination of driver seatbelt unfastened and any other seatbelt fastened? A car designer would know state detection and transition and can design a fool proof method for this. There might be an alternate solution as well (maybe a time-delay detect), which might be a lot simpler.
So, How expensive is it to put a system like this in place, and make it standard across all cars? I’m sure people who design cars as a profession will have better ideas, or can improve on this one.
Put yourself in the position of that helpless baby who dehydrated and died inside an overheated car, and you’ll understand why this should not happen to anyone. ever.
because life is precious.
