A Texas mother was taken into custody Tuesday after police alleged her 22-month-old child died when she left the infant in a car outside a Corpus Christi school on one of the hottest days of the year.

The mother, 33-year-old Hilda Ann Adame, was jailed on charges of causing serious bodily injury to a child and child endangerment/abandonment with imminent bodily injury, according to a Corpus Christi Police Department incident report.

It was not clear how long the infant had been in the car before the baby was found unresponsive, according to the incident report.

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[–] disgrunty 6 points 3 months ago (4 children)

I don't have kids and I don't plan to, but instead of all the smart crap in cars, why don't car manufacturers put some kind of car seat detection in? Like a little alarm that plays if you walk away from your car with a baby or child in it?

They can tell if someone's in a seat without their seatbelt, they should be able to work out a way to detect car seats too. This is 100% preventable.

Hell, not even car manufacturers. If someone made a Hackathon-type event where the goal was to make the best baby alert system, I'm sure there's at least one smart person out there who could crack this.

[–] madcaesar 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

No can do, that makes too much sense.

Here is a touch screen and the HVAC controls are 4 menus deep.

[–] disgrunty 1 points 3 months ago

Dagnabbit you've got me there!

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

They exist, some models do alert you if you have something in the back seat.

[–] disgrunty 1 points 3 months ago

That's good to hear! Hopefully it becomes more common or someone makes a universal kit to adapt existing vehicles someday. It probably wouldn't be as elegant as a built-in fix, but definitely less waste and expense.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Why not reduce reliance on car centric commutes or something?

[–] disgrunty 1 points 3 months ago

That would be ideal, I agree. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't make cars safer in the meantime for children, who don't have a say in the matter.

[–] MTK 1 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Simple reason, people ignore/disable it.

Most people using cars are adults, only a small number also have a young enough child that this would be a worry. You can buy specialized pads that you put on the seat which reminds you if something was left there, and yet this happens a lot.

The truth of the matter is, people are the problem and a technological solution would have to be mich more complex to work around peoples' carelessness and ignorance