Looking to technology to save children

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very year, without fail, young children die needless deaths in Canada because adults have left them alone in cars on sweltering days.

Every year, without fail, there are new and anguished public debates about what should be done to avert such tragedies.

Yet every year, without fail, we are unable to embrace the necessary changes that will save the lives of the very young and very vulnerable among us. Heat deaths in parked vehicles just keep happening.

But last week there was a glimmer of light at the end of this stifling tunnel: A Quebec coroner delivered an audacious but perfectly sensible recommendation that would protect children while sparing families and communities untold heartache.

Denyse Langelier issued a call for all vehicles sold in Canada to be equipped with a high-tech alert system that would prevent heat deaths by warning forgetful or negligent adults a child was still aboard.

For skeptics deterred by the added costs of this solution, we would only say: You cannot put a price on the life of a single infant or young child. You cannot afford to ignore this coroner’s plea.

In a typical year, between four and six children die in Canada due to being left in a hot vehicle, according to Canada Safety Council spokesperson Lewis Smith.

This past May, a three-year-old boy died of hyperthermia after being left in a car on a hot day in Burlington while in June a sixmonth-old infant died in similar circumstances in Montreal.

Meanwhile, there are too many dangerous close calls. In May, police charged a man with leaving a child unattended after a youngster was left in a hot car in a Hamilton parking lot.

Also in May, a video surfaced that apparently showed a baby being left in a car in Waterloo – and then the ensuing confrontation that occurred when a woman returned to the car and admitted to have left the child inside it.

You’d think by now, with such terrible deaths and frightening incidents being reported by media, that adults would realize that whether its windows are open or closed, a vehicle can quickly become like a furnace, even on what seems to be a comfortably warm day.

And yet there was Quebec Coroner Denyse Langelier probing the death of 11-month-old Jacob Ethier-Magnan, whose father somehow forgot to drop him off at a daycare and left the baby in his car seat on a searingly hot day in August 2017.

While ruling that the death was accidental, Langelier stressed, as others have before her, that basic and existing technological advances could have saved this baby’s life.

Trying to decide what technology would work best or worrying about added costs for new vehicles should not stop Canadian authorities – are you listening Transport Canada? – and automakers from doing something.

Langelier herself pointed out that when she turns off her car, she gets “a reminder not to forget my cellphone.” Why can’t there be a similar reminder to check the back seat?

Some vehicles can already be programmed so a voice alarm sounds when the vehicle is turned off. More than 20 models of General Motors vehicles have a light that flashes the message on the instrument panel “look in rear seat,” when the vehicle is turned off.

Of course, adults need to take more care to be more vigilant themselves.

But if we have cars that can basically drive themselves, we can have cars that remind us of the precious back-seat cargo that we might, some hot day, otherwise forget.

— Hamilton Spectator