New Technology Aims to Alert Parents to Children Left in Cars

Updated to add information from General Motors.

We all think we would never, ever, ever accidentally leave our kid in a hot, locked car. No, that is something other people do. Neglectful people. Bad parents. Not us. Unfortunately, that thinking just is not true. Plenty of responsible, knowledgeable parents—a doctor, a hospital CEO, and so many others—have made the tragic mistake of leaving their children strapped into their car seats, forgetting they were in the car, often to fatal results. It happens: a change of routine, the normal exhaustion that comes with parenting, a child asleep and therefore silent, the constant rush of our schedules. And suddenly a random, one-in-a-million mistake begets the worst horror imaginable to a parent.  

There have been many attempts at technological solutions to this problem, and the latest was announced today by Nissan: The Rear Door Alert (RDA) uses a honking horn and/or dashboard warning to remind drivers to check their back seats after parking. The system, designed by two moms who are Nissan engineers, will be standard on the 2018 Pathfinder, which goes on sale in September. 

Here’s how the Nissan press release describes the system:

“RDA monitors the rear door switches to detect their open/closed status prior to and after a trip. If the system detects that a rear door was opened/closed prior to a trip, but then was not re-opened again after the trip was completed, given the vehicle was put in park and the ignition cycled off, the system responds with a series of notifications, starting with a display in the instrument panel and progressing to subtle but distinctive chirps of the horn.

“Because there are so many scenarios in which a driver might open a rear door—everything from throwing in a gym bag to cleaning the car—the RDA system is easily configurable and can be turned off temporarily or permanently through prompts in the cluster display.”