Seat sensor plan aims to keep kids safe

A simple seat sensor or alarm button in child-care vehicles could have spared the lives of two Florida toddlers who died last month after being forgotten in hot vans, state legislators from Orlando say. Now, they’re proposing a new law to require the technology.

“We’ve had two deaths with day-care centers back to back. And it’s like this every summer — because we live in Florida,” said state Sen. Linda Stewart, D-Orlando. “We have a checks-and-balance system where two people are supposed to sign that all the kids have gotten off, but if that worked, children wouldn’t be dying. We can’t leave this to human error.”

Her proposal, still being drafted, would require seat sensors or alarms in all commercial vehicles that transport small children. She has not decided the upper age limit yet, but it would at least extend through preschool.

Like warning buzzers that remind drivers they’ve left their keys in the ignition or their headlights on, the sensors trigger an alert that a seat is still occupied after a vehicle’s engine is shut off.

Other systems employ an alarm that requires the driver to walk to the back of the vehicle and push a button to turn it off.

“I’ve seen the sensors for as little as $35 per seat,” Stewart said. “We’re not talking about a huge cost burden.”

For Barbara Livingston, the great aunt of Myles Hill, who died Aug. 7, it would be money well spent.

“I think it would have saved him,” she said of the 3-year-old, who was left behind in a day-care van for 12 hours while the temperature soared to an estimated 144 degrees. “I hope and pray to God they pass that. It won’t bring Myles back, but it will save another child.”

Less than two weeks after Myles’ death, a 3-yearold Pensacola girl died when she was left in a day care van there — the fifth death of a Florida child in a hot vehicle so far this year.

On average, about 37 children die of heatstroke in cars each year in the U.S., roughly 10 percent of them in day-care vehicles.

Florida’s day-care centers, licensed by the state Department of Children and Families, are already required to keep vehicle passenger logs with each child’s name, the date, time of departure and time of arrival. A second staff member must also sign the log, verifying that all children have left the vehicle.

Stewart’s proposal wouldn’t be the state’s first attempt to require the safety features. In 2011, a South Florida lawmaker introduced the Haile Brockington Act, named after the 2year-old Delray Beach toddler who died after being forgotten in a hot daycare van for nearly six hours. The bill failed that session and was reintroduced in 2016, when it failed again for lack of a companion bill in the state House of Representatives.

Palm Beach County has since passed its own safety-alarm ordinance, as has Broward County.