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Comment by lake_vincent | Hacker News Reader

Was going to come here to say something very similar. I'm no luddite, but some things really shouldn't be left to tech like this...

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Maybe not this specifically but a similar tech should be considered to detect babies in hot cars.

Automobile manufacturers are doing this now, IIRC. With sensors on the seats to remind you that you put something heavy into the car.

Hmm, I don't think so - seat sensors are used to enable / disable passenger airbags, my memory is that they only register weights over 40lb / 18kg.

> In 2016, General Motors took the lead among automotive manufacturers by introducing the Rear Seat Reminder, a technology designed to nudge drivers to check their back seats as they exit their vehicles. It uses an audible alert and a front panel message to tell drivers to check the rear of their vehicle for occupants.

> Rear Seat Reminder technology became standard on all new Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, and Cadillac four-door sedans, SUVs, and crossovers starting with the 2019 model year, and also will be standard on all 2020 model year GM pickup trucks, said GM spokesperson Phil Lienert.

> Kia, Nissan, and Subaru offer rear-seat alert systems in many of their models, according to Car and Driver, and Hyundai announced on July 31 – National Heatstroke Day – that it planned to incorporate the technology across all models by 2022. One of Hyundai’s newest innovations is the Ultrasonic Rear Occupant Alert, in which a sensor can detect the presence of a child (or pet) and activates a loud horn if the driver leaves with the child inside.

https://mashable.com/article/car-seat-alarms-prevent-hot-car...

Interesting, though hard to see how that prevents people from leaving children and pets in the front seats...

I'm not sure where you live but in the United States, in some states, children are required by law to ride in the back seat of an automobile until they are, I believe, 8 years of age. I believe that various state and federal agency recommendations are for children to ride in the back seat of an automobile until they are 13 years of age.

Presumably, then, parents are not putting their young children who cannot operate a car door into the front seat of a car and leaving them.

Pets? Sure, that's a different story.

Fearing the worst outcome ought to inspire you to make the tech better, not avoid it altogether.

But the tech exists. It's not like we're using tin cans and string and trying to replace that with a gizmo; we have the gizmo, and now we're trying to make an open-source version of it. While the goal is admirable there's no real benefit from using a less-tested Raspberry Pi project. There are less risky ways to learn the same lessons - a video walky-talky maybe.

As a father, I generally agree with what you both are saying regarding being conservative with tech choices on delicate areas such as babies, but I‘d also add that 99% of situations of my baby making random noises (that also trigger a baby monitor) are not something that are going yo have an impact on the baby long term. Most times my baby has lost the pacifier in the dark, and finds it before I reach upstairs (or annoyingly, between me waking up, and me reaching my bedroom door).

Also there’s the scary converse: some important things do not make a noise, such as a baby suffocating in her sleep.

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