Tesla implements my kid-in-hot-car alarm 17 years later

by philg

From 2003, “Lack of wireless Internet killing children”:

A recent AP story talks about the increasing number of children dying after being left in sealed cars by mistake. As a society we have 99% of the infrastructure necessary to prevent this. Most newer cars have an alarm system and automatic climate control. The alarm system implies a vibration sensor, a microphone (for glass breakage), and a little computer that is up and running all the time. The automatic climate control implies an interior thermometer.

With a bit of programming the car can recognize that (a) someone is inside the car making noise and moving around a bit, and (b) that the temperature is climbing to an unsafe level (or getting too cold in the winter). Now what? If we had a wireless Internet for the price of $3 in chips the car would be able to send an instant message to the owner and the local police to come back and check the car. (Of course you could do this now if you wanted to buy a $300/year cell phone subscription for the car, which is essentially what the GM OnStar system does, but most people wouldn’t be willing to pay the extra $300/year for something with such a low probability of ever being used. Hence the need for a better national infrastructure.)

From last week, “Tesla seeks approval for sensor that could detect child left in hot cars”:

Tesla Inc. asked the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for approval to market a short-range interactive motion-sensing device that could help prevent children from being left behind in hot cars and boost theft-prevention systems.

So it wasn’t a terrible idea, but it did arrive 17 years after I thought it should have.

Related:

  • Car/Kennel (my 2003 plan for something like Tesla’s Dog Mode)

17 thoughts on “Tesla implements my kid-in-hot-car alarm 17 years later”

  1. I guess it’s a good idea. I’m opposed to sensors and systems of this kind, so I hope it can be disabled. My basic rationale is that if parents are stupid enough to leave their kids in a locked vehicle in the heat, and those kids get baked to death because their parents were stupid and irresponsible, they deserve what they get.

    • Alex: I don’t think that forgetting about a silent sleeping child in the back of a car is a sign of stupidity or irresponsibility. Some of the world’s smartest people have either been absent-minded or have had absent-minded moments. See https://medium.com/cantors-paradise/the-absent-minded-father-of-cybernetics-norbert-wiener-2a0b66aa6b4b for example.

      The world’s most intelligent person is not as good a pilot as two people of average intelligence using checklists to make sure that nothing has been forgotten. If smart people never forgot anything, airlines could achieve great safety simply by hiring smart pilots and operated single-pilot. But we don’t see that, even in countries where high IQs are common.

    • Alex: Do you want to tell us that you’ve never gone to the supermarket to buy Item A and come home with Items B, C, and D that caught your eye while you were there, but not Item A, which was the original motivation of the trip?

    • > Alex: I don’t think that forgetting about a silent sleeping child in the back of a car is a sign of stupidity or irresponsibility.

      Are you serious? Really? It’s amazing to see you write that. As a pilot, wouldn’t you be responsible for the individual passengers in your aircraft, at least to some extent? Moreover, parents have a legal responsibility to care for their children, even if they don’t like them. The Tesla system may work, but it doesn’t and shouldn’t relieve parents of those responsibilities.

      I’m not talking about Norbert Weiner and other people of his intellectual ability who have some idea so compelling that they walk around in a dreamland of their unbelievably brilliant thoughts. And I don’t believe that, either. I’m talking about regular people who put their kids in a car and decide to go traipsing around in the store, in the heat, which they know is hot while they’re walking to the store. It’s ridiculous. They don’t have any excuse for that, and weaning people off of their responsibility to care for their own children isn’t going to help them learn.

      >The world’s most intelligent person is not as good a pilot as two people of average intelligence using checklists to make sure that nothing has been forgotten.

      Yes, exactly. It’s a one-point checklist: “Is a child in the back seat?” YES/NO.

    • Alex: The problem started when the government forced people to put kids in the back seat. It is very common to leave things in the back seat that one had intended to take out. Look at a flight school rental aircraft! There are often forgotten items in the back. Think about your own behavior. If I want to remember to take something, I put it in the front seat where I can see it.

      So… of course parents are responsible for children, but engineers are also responsible for designing machines that take human nature into account. One the government ordered young children into the back seat, in my opinion it became the engineer’s job to make sure that the car wasn’t turned into a lethal hot oven.

      (Additional common forgetting of items: Bags of previously purchased items placed under restaurant chairs.)

    • @Philg:

      That was a stupid idea, also. Dumber leads to dumber. I’m being a little loose with that but it’s true.

    • > It is very common to leave things in the back seat that one had intended to take out. Look at a flight school rental aircraft! There are often forgotten items in the back. Think about your own behavior. If I want to remember to take something, I put it in the front seat where I can see it.

      Yeah, like what? Bullshit. Your child is not a “forgotten item”. They are not a McDonald’s wrapper, or a piece of paper printed on some laser printer in a flight school office.

    • Alex: In aviation, there are two ways to respond to hearing about a mistake that led to an accident. Way #1: That pilot was an idiot and it would never happen to me because I am so much better. Way #2: That could have been me on a bad day or in a bad moment. I am glad that it hasn’t happened to me yet, but I am going to see if I can change my procedures so that it is less likely to happen to me.

      https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/08/02/hot-car-deaths-why-they-keep-happening-and-how-stop-them/1861389001/

      talks about human cognitive shortcomings that lead to this once young children are pushed into the back seat.

      Maybe coronaplague will cut back on these now that fewer Americans can go places in cars.

  3. Of course, by version two or three of this feature, it’ll automatically report the incident to the local Child Protective Services office. Leaving your kids in the car (even in a reasonable situation) results in a years-long court battle with the government to ever see them again.

  5. What about kids who climb into a parked car and die?
    https://people.com/human-interest/alabama-toddlers-found-dead-hot-car/

    For the ones still being forgotten and left in hot cars by their parents after a drive to the nail salon, we should have government-mandated and/or provided car nannies who ride in the back with the kids and remind us to take the kid out, preferably a rotation of blonde/brunette/redhead so that we don’t get bored or distracted by other things and forget that there’s a nanny in the back.

    That should get us by until we can ride in the back where it’s safe with the kids while Tesla does the driving for us, because everyone knows computers will (eventually) be safer drivers than people.

  6. Everyone,

    Sorry for my tone last night. I know it’s a tragedy when a child is trapped in a hot car and can’t get out, but I wanted to see what other people thought, so I asked a few folks at a local store. They basically agreed that it’s the parent’s responsibility to make sure their kids are safe, and that the relentless push to scan and watch and control and warn about everything in people’s lives is getting creepy. These are not Tesla drivers, they’re kind of Deplorables. Their basic stance is that the government is already extremely invasive and that people who do dumb things should be punished for it. They have a different threshold and judgment process.

    Having said that, I guess the warning system with the millimeter-wave radar scanning the passenger compartment won’t do any harm. They’ll keep developing that system until it can figure out what you’re wearing in the car, it will be identifying all kinds of objects and sending telemetry about them to Tesla HQ. “Jane was wearing open-toed shoes this morning when she took her kids to day care. It’s 30 degrees! She’ll get frostbite!” And an ad for a pair of boots pops up on the infotainment system. We know that these systems are always engineered to be extended as the developers’ imagination comes up with new uses for it. It never ends.

    We also know that the automobile industry is reconfiguring itself into a data mining syndicate. The product isn’t going to be the car, it’s the data the car collects about you.

    • Alex: I think your conversations with folks at the store prove that we humans like to imagine that we are smarter than others (see also any New York Times reader/writer and any Democrat!).

      Cars already have a lot of nanny tech. Lane departure warnings for those who get distracted by a text message or get sleepy. Front collision warning. Rear cross traffic alert. Blind spot monitor. If we don’t object to these technologies, what is problematic about a back seat child alert system?

      Humans have some good features and capabilities, but being consistent and constantly vigilant is not one of them. Computers are kind of stupid (look at autocorrect on an iPhone!) but awesome at being vigilant 24/7 and never getting bored.

    • Alex: Although I agree it is tragic when a child dies, I try not to let sentiment or my personal feelings influence me when it comes to engineering analysis. Everything I wrote would still be valid even if there were nothing more at stake than some cold milk from the supermarket that would spoil if left inadvertently in the back seat. The only thing that would change is the price that it would make sense to pay for the technology (since a spoiled carton of milk is not worth very much).

Comments are closed.