Over the weekend I saw a weeping father in court because he accidentally left his two youngest children in a hot car all day and they had both died from the heat. I went online to find more information about the case and I discovered that the same tragedy is repeated all over the country dozens of times every year.

I’m old enough to remember the first car seat belts and how after they were introduced lots of people died because wearing them was not mandatory. Laws were passed and eventually cars came equipped with safety beepers and flashing lights if weight was detected on a seat and the seat belt was not fastened. As car safety became a major concern, it was determined that small children had a much lesser chance of being injured if they had specially designed seats that were “seat belted” into a vehicle’s back seat. However, the safety of the back seat means that many sleeping babies are forgotten in hot cars with tragic results. All that is needed to avoid that is a beeper system that sets off flashing lights and horn beeping if a car is turned off and a seat belt is left clicked shut.

My 11 year old pick-up truck has a system in place that turns on the in cab light when the engine is turned off and the key is removed, the light stays for a few moments and then it goes off automatically. If the seat belt safety system had the same time frame as my in cab light the weeping father in the courtroom would have only made it about ten or twenty feet from his car when the alarm would have gone off. I don’t think having to refasten a kiddie car seat every time a baby is loaded up is any real problem if it will save lives. I can guarantee that there would never be a dead baby found in a hot parked car with the lights flashing and the horn blaring. America desperately needs another safer vehicles law that could be in place by the next model year. Until that law is in place there are procedures that greatly lessen the chances that a baby will be forgotten.

When a tot is loaded into the back seat the child’s toys and diaper bag should always be loaded into the front seat, so that it is very difficult to forget that there is a baby onboard.