Anyone Could Forget a Kid in a Hot Car, Research Shows (consumerreports.org)

My car detects an attached carseat and flashes a warning when the car is turned off: please check back seat. More cars should have this warning

I take my 18-month old to daycare each morning, before parking my car a few streets away and catching the train into work. It is terrifying to think that one day I might just forget to drop him off.

My partner usually picks him up in the evening. About 6 months ago she was busy so I did it. I picked him up, drove home, parked the car in the garage and walked straight into the house. Something felt wrong, but it was maybe 30 seconds until I realised I'd left him in the car. He was completely fine, but it put the fear of God into me.

Anyway, I'll contribute my poorly thought out technical solution - a thermal camera that monitors the seats for warm bodies, if you lock the car when present it beeps the horn.

One of the infinite number of things that would be solved by having an always on companion error checker AI pendant.

Despite the first word of the title being "Anyone", it seemed to me until 5 minutes ago that this is an American thing. But 5 minutes ago ChatGPT gave me links to news stories of this sort of thing happening in many countries.

Recognizing a child is alone in a car seat seems like something modern machine image recognition should be able to do reliably. If the child is alone in a car and the temperature is not safe then it could honk the horn and announce there is a child in the car and call 911 and the parents

As someone with ADHD, this was always terrifying to me. I developed a personal habit of not closing the driver door until I got my kid out of the car. So the driver door was always closed last. If I went grocery shopping, I opened my door, got out, got my child, got a cart, then as I head into the store, I close my door. Crazy, but if you have ADHD you know this is the kind of thing you have to do.