![]() Beyond that, in a smaller percentage of cases, a child is left in a car on purpose, often with no intent to cause harm but because the parent expects to be away from the vehicle for just a short time. They could honk the horn, contact emergency services, roll down the windows or turn on the air conditioning, even if no parent is around.Ībout one child in four who dies in a hot car got into the vehicle on their own, she said. Thomas was one of at least four children to die after being left in vehicles despite a rear seat reminder alert, said Rollins.ĭirect in-car detectors, which provide greater certainty that there really is someone in the vehicle, could initiate more urgent steps than just a gentle reminder in the gauge screen, said Rollins. It wasn’t until the afternoon that Cestia had the horrible realization that he had never seen the babysitter that day. At some point he may have turned down the volume of the alert sound, he said, something he didn’t even know was possible. If the vehicles’ back door is opened and closed before the driver gets in and starts the vehicle, then, when the vehicle is turned off, a tone sounds and a warning appears reminding the driver to check the back seat.Ĭestia’s truck had a rear seat reminder but, he said, he somehow didn’t notice it when he got to work. Rear seat reminders operate based on a simple logic. Today, many vehicles already have a “rear seat reminder” system to help reduce the chances of this sort of tragedy. “We can use that also to detect, to have an idea, at least, of the age because babies breathe faster than adults,” said Muscat. These systems, including Continental’s and the others, are so refined they can detect even the small movement of a child breathing under a blanket. Volvo claims its system, which will be available next year on some Volvo and Polestar electric vehicles, can detect a living being even in the cargo area. If one of these things is moving, even slightly, that indicates there’s something alive inside the parked car. ![]() That existing sensor system can be repurposed to detect a car’s own radio signal bouncing back off objects inside the car, providing a detailed three-dimensional view of the car’s interior, said David Muscat, chief engineer at Continental. Hyundai MOBIS’s system is already being offered in its models in the company’s home market of South Korea and could come to the US next year, the company said.Ĭontinental’s child detection technology relies on radio frequencies usually used to communicate with a smartphone as part of a “phone as a key” system, which uses radio signals and sensors. Several companies, including Volvo, as well as the auto parts suppliers Hyundai MOBIS, part of the Hyundai Group, and Continental, have developed radar-like systems that operate inside the vehicle to detect the presence of any living being, whether a pet or a person. But now new technologies hold the promise of putting a stop to at least a great many of them. These deaths are horrible tragedies leaving behind enormous grief compounded with feelings of guilt. ![]() People are busy, life can be confusing and even the most attentive, caring parents can temporarily forget about a child in the backseat or think they made that stop at the daycare when, in fact, they didn’t make the drop-off that day. It happened to at least 36 young children last year. Hot car deaths like Thomas’s have happened at least eight times so far this year, a deadly trend that has come surging back amid cross-country heat waves and as more busy parents return to their workplaces, according to the auto safety group. Thomas died strapped into his safety seat, as his small body was simply overcome by the heat. Temperatures inside of Cestia’s parked GMC Sierra pickup would have been well over 100 degrees. ![]() ![]() The outside temperature peaked at almost 90 degrees that day. With Thomas silent and not visible, the stop at the babysitter just slipped his mind. “I keep it in my mind that he was asleep.”Ĭestia, a manager at a welding company, had a big financial audit coming up at work that day, and he had a safety presentation to give in the morning. “He was pretty quiet whenever we’d ride,” Tyler Cestia said. Once he was buckled in, it was nearly impossible to see him from the driver’s seat, and he didn’t make a sound. His two-year-old boy, Thomas, asked to ride in the “big boy seat,” the child safety seat his older brother usually rode in, the one right behind the driver’s seat. One hot June day in Louisiana, Tyler Cestia was supposed to drop his son off at a babysitter before continuing on to work. ![]()
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