Baby Killed In A Hot Car? Child Seat Technology Could Prevent Future Deaths

Every day it seems like there is another report of a baby killed in a hot car, or of parents being arrested because they left their kids behind in a vehicle for “just a minute” while they run into a gas station or grocery store. But it seem that technology should be capable of helping prevent more unnecessary deaths.

In a related report by The Inquisitr, if a child is dying in a locked car a new law allows strangers to break open a window in order to save children.

This topic is dedicated to my grandmother, who insisted I write this article this evening after we had lunch together. Speaking about the latest news, my grandmother felt horrible that so many young lives were cut short because of parents who forgot their children inside a hot car during the summer. She believes it is an avoidable tragedy and she does not see any reason why new technology can’t be used to prevent futures deaths.

Some of the blame probably comes from lack of knowledge. Many parents don’t know that “death by heatstroke is the second highest cause of death for children under the age of 14. Being left in a hot car is considered a large contributing factor and even if the weather is 60 degrees outside a child could be close to death in under 20 minutes if locked inside a car. If it’s 80 degrees outside a child may die in only 10 minutes even if the car is parked in the shade.”

My grandmother believes a new invention should be mandated for car seat designs. The idea would be to make the child car seat be pressure sensitive in order to detect an occupant inside the seat, which is already done for passenger seatbelt alerts. The seat would then emit some sort of warning, perhaps even a low volume song, that should be noticeable when the car is parked and the engine turned off. But the idea could go one step further and incorporate Bluetooth to communicate with both the vehicle and the parent’s smartphones via an app. If the parent forgets the child inside the seat, both the car and the smartphone would set off an alert.

Do you think this idea for a new child seat design would help prevent kids being killed in hot cars?