
A Mother Whose Lapse Led to Child’s Death Seeks to Prevent Hot-Car Casualties - helloworld
https://www.wsj.com/articles/from-a-mothers-tragedy-a-call-to-action-1525274572
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methodover
Wow, that is a tragic, terrifying story. I hope the mother can find some
peace. It's good work she's doing.

One thing not discussed yet:

Could cars could be smarter? I wonder how hard it would be for them to detect
the presence of a child still inside?

That's probably really quite difficult to do, actually. :/

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dragonwriter
> Could cars could be smarter? I wonder how hard it would be for them to
> detect the presence of a child still inside?

The passenger seat belt alarm on a car I had rcenetly would trigger
considtently with a gallon bottle of milk; to detect a child in a child seat
you'd need it to ignore the seat but trigger with child plus seat, which may
be a little more involved but shouldn't be impractical.

Alarm UX may be tricky: you ideally want to alarm when the driver exits the
car with a child in the back, but to avoid alarm fatigue you probably don't
want to do it when entering.

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supreme_sublime
It is interesting because you want basically the opposite of a seat belt
alarm. If the back seat belt is buckled and the seat contains a certain range
of weight (would probably get annoying if it would beep for an adult), it
should beep.

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dragonwriter
> If the back seat belt is buckled and the seat contains a certain range of
> weight (would probably get annoying if it would beep for an adult), it
> should beep.

Well, the alarm timing is different (you don't want it to alarm when driving,
but you do want it to alarm when you are done driving), and you don't want to
rely on a seatbelt (because a car seat attached with LATCH won't use the
seatbelt, though car seats may also be attached with seatbelts—even with LATCH
available you need this at higher weights.)

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supreme_sublime
Ah, I don't have kids and have never put in a car seat, I thought they all
used seatbelts. Damn my assumptions! Probably one of those problems that might
be best served with a simple human solution, like the "bag in the back".

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gwillen
The "bag in the back" slogan makes sense, but I wonder if it wouldn't also
make sense to encourage childcare facilities to treat an unexpected missed
dropoff as a potential dangerous situation until the parent is reached to
confirm their intentions.

