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Waze's New Safety Feature Reminds Drivers Not To Forget Their Child In the Car (go.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ABC News: The navigation app Waze has released a new safety feature that reminds users not to forget their child, pet or other loved ones in the car before getting out. The feature, called "Child reminder," was made available to the public on Thursday, when Waze released its latest update on app stores for Android and iOS. The new feature comes amid concerns over recent child hot car deaths. Since 1998, there have been 37 child heatstroke fatalities on average per year in the U.S., according to the Department of Meteorology and Climate Science at San Jose State University in California. Waze's Head of Brand, Julie Mossler said in a statement: "Just as drivers sometimes forget to turn off their headlights, they sometimes forget things in the car too. This new feature helps keep people present in the vehicle and gives them an important, possibly life-saving reminder, that drivers sometimes need." The "Child reminder" feature is opt-in and can be turned on and off in the app's "general settings." Mossler also said that drivers can customize the alert "to include their child's name or pet's name -- anything that will get their attention at the end of a drive." It will only disappear if a driver has entered a destination in Waze and has arrived at that destination.
I dont want to live in this world anymore...
Yes really. Ignore the ignorant judgemental AC.
Plenty of good articles have been written on this awful subject. I doubt any of us here can do better.
But start with Gene Weingarten's Pulitzer-Winning Feature, 'Fatal Distraction' from 2009:
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Two decades ago, this was relatively rare. But in the early 1990s, car-safety experts declared that passenger-side front airbags could kill children, and they recommended that child seats be moved to the back of the car; then, for even more safety for the very young, that the baby seats be pivoted to face the rear. If few foresaw the tragic consequence of the lessened visibility of the child . . . well, who can blame them? What kind of person forgets a baby?
The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate. In the last 10 years, it has happened to a dentist. A postal clerk. A social worker. A police officer. An accountant. A soldier. A paralegal. An electrician. A Protestant clergyman. A rabbinical student. A nurse. A construction worker. An assistant principal. It happened to a mental health counselor, a college professor and a pizza chef. It happened to a pediatrician. It happened to a rocket scientist....
turn off the goddamned phone once in a while
Might miss a Pokemon.
That's odd. It says that there's on in the back seat of my car.
Have gnu, will travel.
just like the Nobel Prizes.
Excuse me! That would be just the Nobel Peace and Literature prizes. The real Nobel prizes are awarded for science, not politics.
Of course the science prizes are outdated. e.g. the era of individuals making breakthroughs in physics has gone.
Actually, the way to deal with things like this is pretty much established: You do checklists and you never, ever skip them. When they have become part of the routine, you can rule out basically all such accidents that can reasonably be predicted. Of course, this takes a high level of discipline and that is why this is enforced only in cases where a lot of damage could ensue, like pilots. It is basically impossible to explain the necessity to ordinary people (look at all the "could never happen to me" idiots here), because ordinary people do not understand the mechanisms and that it can happen to anybody. It can also not be imposed by force, because it is too intrusive for a free society to tolerate something like that.
But if you want to prevent this happening to you, run trough a checklist that has "child" as one of the things on it whenever you lock your car. I used something like this because I kept forgetting my wallet or my work keys at home. After a few weeks it becomes a reflex which costs you a totally irrelevant 2-3 seconds each time and then the risk is mitigated.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Yup. I'd wager it's about 50/50 between knowingly leaving the kid in there but intending to be back soon and leaving the kid there intending to kill it. The people who actually forget the kid is in the car when they themselves leave the car represent a rounding error.
If this were true, you'd expect statistics to be relatively constant over the past few decades. Instead, there was a sudden uptick in deaths per year beginning right when car seats were required (1998) to be placed in the back seat to avoid the required dual airbags now always present in cars. Analysis of stats suggests that the majority of these deaths are attributed to "accidents," and mostly by people who thought they already had dropped the kid off somewhere else (and thus didn't go check), rather than those "intending to be back soon."
So what? Pretty much every stupid way to die has be done by people in all sorts of catagories. Do we need a voice message on the cubard telling us not to eat that donut because it contributes to heart disease? Waaay more people die due to that then the 15 - 25 (according to your linked to article) kids who die due to being left in the car. In fact, there are thousands of things in this country that kill people of even just children at higher rates than this. Maybe we just need to mount speakers everywhere to nag us?
Or maybe a nag speakers would just be ignored because they're nag speakers. No one reads signs, why would anyone listen to some repetitive message they hear every day?
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Actually, the way to deal with things like this is pretty much established: You do checklists and you never, ever skip them.
Checklists help, but many people are incapable of using them on regular basis. Period. Just like many people can't run marathon distances or lift 200kg weight.
The only real solution is some kind of warm body detector connected to car's alarm system. Doors locked + body insde = alarm, always.
Hell, think about less dangerous episodes of forgetfulness that happen with cars, too. Have you ever gone home, parked the car, and forgotten your shopping or other thing in the car? I've forgotten drinks in the cupholder.
And plenty of people forget about stuff on the ROOF of their car - you know, they put their briefcase, or purse, or cup of coffee or whatever on the roof and rive off with it right there. You'd think with the stuff in the direct line of sight they'd remember, but no.
In each and every one of these situations, it could've been a child - a child in the car instead of the shopping. A chid put aside so the seat can be cleared for the child seat. etc. etc. etc.
The wrong distraction at the wrong moment is usually the cause. Or something unusual. Hell, there have been airplane accidents caused because the pilot got distracted and forgot important checklist items.
Granted, no one dies if you leave your shopping in the car on a hot die (except maybe your wallet as you have to re-buy the perishables) but it's not a big leap to forget other things, including children and pets.
> I for one do not believe the parents involve in these children in hot cars incidents simply forgot they had their children with them while leaving the car.
I can attest that it's happened to me. Not on a blistering hot day, but on a cool one when I was quite tired and the child I was baby sitting for fell asleep. The child was comfortable and reasonably safe, but on a very hot day it could have been tragic. Small children also often nap on car rides, and many parents with small children are chronically sleep deprived. So accidents are unsurprising.
If you leave your kid in the car, you are drug-addled as far as I can tell.
Nonsense. Plenty of people (including me) are just naturally absent minded. I never left my kid in the car, but I could have easily done so. To ensure that didn't happen, I took counter measures. When I buckled my kid into her carseat, I would put my cellphone, wallet, notebook, etc. on the floor in the backseat. When I reached my destination, I would get out of the car, walk a few meters, and reach for my phone to check the time, and suddenly be reminded that my daughter was asleep in her carseat. You may think that I am a terrible person, but that is what worked for me.