Just recently, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration revealed that from 1998 to 2014, 636 children died from heat strokes while nestled inside vehicles. 53 percent of the children who died were "forgotten" in the cars by their caretakers. To prevent this type of incident from happening again, two dads from Florida invented a life-saving device, called Sense-A-Life.
The Idea Behind Sense-A-Life
Fadi Shamma and Jim Friedman are neighbors in Tampa. Both dads have something in common: they want to save children's lives by preventing hot car deaths. This prompted both dads to create Sense-A-Life, a wireless and Bluetooth-powered system that uses a sensor to alert parents or caretakers when it's time to take a child out from the car, according to The Huffington Post.
"We were tired of hearing all these sad stories and seeing the agony on parent's faces," Shamma told Fox29. "And we decided that this is such a serious problem that could probably be solved with a simple solution."
Using Sense-A-Life
Users need to install the one sensor under a child's seat while the other one goes to the door of the driver's side. Once the door is open and a child was left in the car seat, Sense-A-Life will remind the driver to take out the child.
But if the user ignored the alert for a certain amount of time, the alert will be sent to the phone of the other guardian. Both parents are now planning to market the life-saving device to the companies. "We want this to be in every car seat," Shamma said.
The Upside
Sense-A-Life is a really good idea, considering that there are a lot of children who died from heat strokes in cars. According to NBC, in U.S. in 2015 (as of July) 10 children died from heatstroke who were left in cars.
In 2014, there are 31 recorded heatstroke deaths of children left in cars. Experts said heatstroke in car is the second most common cause of death for young children for ages 14 and younger.