A Mother Whose Lapse Led to Child’s Death Seeks to Prevent Hot-Car Casualties

Re:A Mother Whose Lapse Led to Child’s Death Seeks to Preven... by dragonwriter on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @06:43PM (#16981804)

> 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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Re:A Mother Whose Lapse Led to Child’s Death Seeks to Preven... by supreme_sublime on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @07:28PM (#16982056)

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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Re:A Mother Whose Lapse Led to Child’s Death Seeks to Preven... by dragonwriter on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @07:34PM (#16982088)

> 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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Re:A Mother Whose Lapse Led to Child’s Death Seeks to Preven... by supreme_sublime on Thursday May 03, 2018 @09:22AM (#16985731)

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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Re:A Mother Whose Lapse Led to Child’s Death Seeks to Preven... by itsmejeff on Wednesday May 02, 2018 @09:58PM (#16982784)

It's almost trivial for computer vision to recognize a child -- we already have backup safety cameras to protect children (among other things), why not a backseat cam?

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