A 9-month-old child has died after being left in a car by the child’s grandmother for nearly eight hours in what authorities are investigating as a heat-related death.
The incident occurred in Beeville, Texas, some 100 miles southeast of San Antonio, on Wednesday when the Beeville Police Department said a child was found unresponsive at approximately 4 p.m. in the child safety seat of their grandmother’s car, according to a statement from the Beeville Police Department.
8 hours in a hot car in Texas sounds like a recipe for a brisket. That’s just awful. I always assume it’s an accident and not negligence until I hear otherwise, but there needs to be better safety systems for this. Either teaching new parents personal systems or built into cars.
Modern cars often have specific safety features for this, but it’s probably with older models that it happens most often.
Yeah, my 2023 beeps and says “check back seat” when you turn off the car if you’ve opened the back door before you started the car.
My parents Volvo has a similar feature. I don’t know if it’s related to the doors or if there are pressure sensors in the back seat.
The downside is that goddamn thing is so over engineered that it gives dings and warnings for everything so after a short time they become white noise
After that in my 2023 car it will also beep even more when you shut the door after exiting the drivers seat. It does it after I turn it back on after dropping the child off at day care when I am leaving it at work so it tracks it for 2 parks essentially.
Mine has a weight sensor, that reminds me about back seat passengers, which a strapped in car seat would definitely trigger, considering I had to turn it off because my >30lb dog kept triggering it.
You’re not that off with the brisket comment. On the really hot days here in Texas you can take a cookie sheet, buy a pack of break and bake cookie dough, put the dough on the cookie sheet, leave it on your dash board and go to work.
When you get out you have a dozen fresh soft baked cookies and your car smells amazing 😁
For a while, and it might still be there, Waze had an option to add a pop-up to check the back seat for kids after a drive was done. Knowing I had a backup gave me peace of mind.
They have detection systems to make sure our keys don’t allow us to lock the car. It wouldn’t be that tough to find a way. We just need to complain to our reps.