Device notifies parent if toddler wiggles out of seat or is left in car after it stops moving
Larry Edsall/ Special to The Detroit News

Bobby Steffen recalls that his middle daughter — now 13 years old — had this habit of freeing herself from her car seat when she was little more than an infant.

“She liked to get out of her car seat going down the road,” Steffen remembers.

Such a situation can be dangerous. Being unrestrained in cars involved in traffic accidents is the No. 1 cause of death for children ages 2 to 8, Steffen notes.

Leaving a child in a car seat too long, however, also can be dangerous.

Four years ago, Steffen, who owns a boat rental business, read in his local newspaper about a doctor who forgot to take her child out of a car seat on a hot St. Louis day. The child died, as do some 50 children a year who are left in cars in hot or cold weather, Steffen learned.

To alert parents when children escape their seats or to remind them to remove a child once the car is parked, Steffen and a friend and business partner, long-time Ford engineer Greg Schoenberg, created a solution — the Cars-N-Kids Car Seat Monitor.

The monitor is a small, thin, pressure-sensitive rectangle device that is placed between the car-seat cover and the child’s car seat itself.

Using Bluetooth cell phone technology and a special smartphone app, the monitor alerts a parent when a child leaves the seat or when a child is still in a car seat five minutes after the vehicle has stopped moving.

The monitor also can notify a parent of the temperature in the seat so he or she can properly adjust rear-seat climate controls, Steffen said.

The monitor can be used with any size child’s car seat, he said.

The monitor is powered by three AAA batteries, which Steffen said should be changed every four months.

Suggested retail price for the Cars-N-Kids Car Seat Monitor is $39.95

For information, visit www.carseatmonitor.com.

Larry Edsall is a Phoenix-based freelance writer. You can reach him at [email protected].

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20111124/AUTO03/111240324/Seat-monitor-improves-child-car-safety#ixzz1eqNwY5U6