AT least 41 children have died of heatstroke in the United States this year after being left in the back seat of a parked vehicle.
Since 1990, more than 800 children have died in overheated cars. Many of these deaths occurred because parents forgot that the children were in the car.
While automakers offer technology that steers vehicles or alerts drivers to cars in the next lane, they have not released technology to remind drivers when they forget a child in the back seat.
Congressional lawmakers are now weighing whether to require new cars to include a device for detecting children in the back seat and warning drivers of their presence after the engine has been turned off. The requirements were attached to a bill passed last month to speed up the development of self-driving vehicles. The Senate version of the bill, which cleared a committee vote this month, includes an amendment with the warning requirement.
While automakers like Hyundai, General Motors and Nissan have developed warning systems, the auto industry has been reluctant to add the technology. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the leading auto industry trade group, is opposed to the proposed rules, which were released in July.
“In particular, we are concerned about proposals where it takes many years before results are seen, because 18 lives have already been lost this year in hot cars. And, the proposed mandate for notification technology in cars misses the targeted population, because so few parents of young children buy new cars,” says the group.
This is not the first time the Auto Alliance has dismissed the need for regulation. In 2011, the organisation’s vice-president for vehicle safety, Robert Strassburger, made a similar argument. “We shouldn’t overemphasise the effectiveness of technology,” he says, adding that warning devices would initially have minimal impact, because the majority of cars on the road were old.
The Auto Alliance calls for education rather than technology. For 10 years, it has pushed messages, both online and in print, that explain why cars overheat in the sun and that advise parents never to leave children in a car.
But, advocates for stronger rules say the years of educational efforts have not reduced the number of deaths. And, in almost all cases, they say, the action is a matter of distraction and simple forgetfulness.
“You can’t teach people not to forget. There is a scientific reason why this is happening. It’s not that people don’t love their kids,” says Janette Fennell, president of KidsandCars.org, an organisation dedicated to protecting kids in and around motor vehicles.
David Diamond, a neuroscientist at the University of South Florida who has studied the issue, says a child in the back seat can easily be forgotten because habit memory can take over during the drive home from work. It can cause a person to forget to stop on the way for an important prescription. Police officers, he says, have forgotten their guns after laying them down on the toilet paper roll in public bathrooms, so it should not be surprising that parents forget their child in the back seat.
“The brain process is the same. It involve interaction between our habit and conscious memory systems,” says Diamond.
General Motors and Nissan have introduced technologies that remind drivers that a child is in the back seat by analysing door sequencing. If the rear door is opened before the engine is started but not after it is turned off, a warning sounds. The GM reminder is standard or available in many of this year’s models and will be offered in others next year. The Nissan system is standard on the 2018 Pathfinder and will be on other models in the future.
This technology does not meet the standards of the legislation, however, because it does not detect the presence of a child. Hyundai’s technology, which is scheduled for release on some 2019 models, can detect someone’s presence in the back seat.
Some companies that sell equipment to the auto industry have developed warning devices. One such system, the VitaSense, uses low-power radio to sense movement and breathing. The technology, developed in Luxembourg by IEE, a manufacturer of automotive sensors, can reportedly detect sleeping infants in a rear-facing child seat. If a child is detected after the engine has been turned off, it alerts the driver by several means, including flashing lights, beeps and messages sent to cellphones and computers.
Fennell applauds independent efforts to produce warning devices, but argues that the only real solution is legislation that requires the technology in all new vehicles.
When she got an alert from her car that she had left her gas tank open, Fennell says: “I realised that while my car can tell me that, it can’t tell me if a child has been left in the back seat. We get buzzers and warnings for everything. How in the world do you not develop a reminder for what is indisputably the most important thing?” NYT