Funny I was just saying the same thing to my DD last night! I'm so happy to learn this will be on the market very soon, even one life saved because of it will be fantastic.

this is brilliant!!!

I saw this too, on Facebook, and thought it was a great idea. Someone chided me saying that parents should just pay more attention to their kids. While that would be fine in an ideal world, with all that people have to deal with these days, what is wrong with having "technology" help you take care of your family? I think it's a very smart idea!! It would make a great gift when a family has their first baby.

And it is black??? The seat will be too hot if it has been sitting empty in the sun. Make it a light beige. I would not buy a black seat, just as I do not buy black upholstery in our cars.

It looks like there's different colors.

Here's the link to the Walmart page for it. And the information page for evenflo.

Evenflo

Walmart

Curious, sold only at Walmart..is that a comment on the people who leave their babies, or the people who shop at Walmart are most likely to....

Or perhaps because WalMart is the biggest retailer in the US . . .

I think this is a great idea but this says it's for a baby. Wonder if they are going to make one for the next step car seat? You can't use this type of car seat for all that long before they have to go to the next one. My granddaughter was little for her age and was in this type of seat for a long time (about a year). But my grandson will likely only use this seat until about 6 months. Hope they can use this technology in the next step car seat.

Also was going to say to those who said they didn't like black, most parents I know use a seat cover so it really doesn't matter that the seat is black.

Walmart is famous for selling products specifically made for them by manufacturers which are not sold in other stores and they are known to be inferior. Returning a lawnmower three times and a television set twice before getting a refund is annoying but not life or death.

Evenflo is a good, long established company. The car seat is rated up to 35 pounds or 30 inches, and it's also available from evenflo's website, so if you have the squickies about shopping at Walmart you don't have to :)

and its affordable; if this were $800 and only available from Britax we'd all be complaining about how the technology should be accessible for everyone.

Its a great idea, simple, easy to use, and other manufacturers will start incorporating similar ideas. Someone had to start, good on them!

Many of the Walmart mfrs are long established companies. But they still provide inferior products to be sold at Walmart prices. Their choice.

We all make mistakes in life. I've made some pretty dumb ones. So far, everyone including my children has survived them. You could never truly punish a parent who accidentally killed a child by leaving it in a hot car. The personal hell a caring parent would go through would be worse than any physical torture or prison sentence.

I'm not sure these seats will be all that effective. If it's annoying, it will wake the baby. If not, it may become everyday background noise. Time will tell.

From what I am understanding this is the first one which they are selling at walmart as a trial and they will be selling them at many other places. In fact I saw something about Target. This is a first step in the right direction! I applaud the company for having the guts to step up and try to design something that could save lives and not be so worried about liability they would not get involved, speaks loudly about this company. Hopefully now others will be inclined to do the same and other types of devices will come to play.

It was just in the news here that in one day in the same walmart parking lot 2 different parents left their children, plural, in the car while they "ran" into the store. It is in the hundreds here, extremely hot, so you can imagine what the temp in the car is. I was in the car for about 5 minutes while my husband was loading stuff in the back and I had to open the door it was stifling I could not breathe, and he had the back hatch open! One was a woman and one was a man. The woman was in the hottest part of the day the man was at 7:30 pm but that does not mean it is any cooler here. Both were arrested!! They are starting to really get serious about these situations as they should. If you are going to the store and take the kids with you for goodness sakes take the kids in with you, how lazy are these people. The woman's children were not all babies they were old enough to tell her hey we are in the car. She did it totally on purpose, not forgotten, which is why they arrested her and him.

caroline94535, good people make terrible, almost-unimaginable mistakes. Maybe some day you will make a life-and death mistake of some kind and understand this. The older I get, the less invincible I feel, and the more sympathy I have for others who fail.

Yes, parents should not forget their children in cars. But it happens. Every single year. Multiple times. So yes, EVERYONE should take whatever precautions they can to avoid this tragedy. People who are too self-righteous to think this could ever happen to them are the ones being irresponsible if they won't take any kind of measures to make sure they don't forget.

There is not a single person in this world who has never made a mistake, never forgotten something, never gone on auto-pilot doing routine events or never lost focus. We're all human and it could happen to anyone. It has nothing to do with intelligence. I'm talking of course of the accidents - purposely leaving your child or pet in the car just for a minute is a completely different situation.

I forgot my youngest one time..No he was not let in a hot car, he was left at daycare.. Hubby worked in the town where the daycare was..I worked in a different town.. I would take son to daycare..Hubby would pick him up..He got off work 1 and 1/2 hours before I did... But this one day..he had to work extra late.. I was to pick son up.. Got off work, drove home, came in the house and only then realized I was suppose to get him from daycare.. of course I got back in the car and went and got him..But changes in routines sometimes cause us to forget...We go on autopilot... My daughter is expecting her 1st..she wants one of these car seats... I told her its the people who think IT would never happen to them...are the ones that need them the most and they wont be buying them

littlebit- I can understand what your saying and while I can understand the sentiment that Caroline expressed, I don't necessarily agree with the anger.

I am one of those parents who does not need one and yes, I AM completely confident that I don't. The reason is that my kids don't go to daycare or a babysitter. I'm ALWAYS with my kids 24/7/365 and I'm ALWAYS doing a head count (I've got 4).

I guess what I'm trying to say, and it may be part of what Caroline was trying to express, is that, there is never a chunk of my day that my kids aren't with me, that I can expect them to be in the care of someone else.

My "parent switch" is never turned off b/c I'm a SAHM. That is, however, not the case with virtually every one of these tragic stories I've read about.

It usually seems to involve working parents and a change in daycare routine.

I think it's great that a technology has been developed to assist, I just hope people don't end up relying on the technology completely and still try to be aware.

As I said in the other thread, just as caroline expresses above, my own
view is that I can't imagine for a second how any parent could forget that one or more of
their kids is with them. Whether in a car or otherwise. I believe some
of those disagreeing have raised no kids. There's nothing wrong with that, but to me such opinions would seem as more from speculation than from experience. I'm the father of and helped raise 3, no one was ever forgotten or left anywhere. No close calls.

There are doting and attentive parents whose kids spend Mon-Friday at school and/or daycare and lousy parents who are with their kids non-stop. And every other combination and permutation. I don't think there's any connection as has been intimated. Even if recent stories have involved mostly working parents as a common thread, I don't think the correlation Texas suggests is valid.

Whether a kid is with a stay at home parent or in some other arrangement varies so much with personal circumstances, family economics, and personal preferences, none of which have anything to do with an individual's skills or attitudes about being a parent.

If someone who hasn't raised kids has a speculative viewpoint only, I would also argue that people who raised their children several decades ago also cannot compare to the experience of modern parenting. The world seems much more hectic. Not only advanced technology and its distractions, but also the fact that people in general are working longer and are more stressed out. Due to the economy and cost of living in many areas, both parents have to work at least one job. Many work multiple jobs, or take on extra shifts which alter the daily routine. Between work and unhealthy lifestyles, people are stressed out and tired, leaving them prone to making mistakes.

Financial pressure from high cost of living, crippling student loan debt, unemployment or under-employment, sky-high childcare costs and a host of other issues facing parents today that didn't necessarily have as big an impact 20-30+ years ago.

I'm not saying parents are any better or worse now or in the past, but rather the distractions are much, much higher now. And the distractions and change in routine are the main thing that seem to fuel this problem.

Snidely- I certainly wasn't trying to bash working parents, more explaining that I don't need one and I KNOW I don't for the reasons stated. I can only speak from my own experience and would never presume to understand what a working parent goes through on a daily basis.

chi, for many reasons parenting for working parents may be easier today. For many, kinder and gentler parent-friendly personnel policies abound. Work-life balance is respected (rather than ignored). Flex hours, more vacation, flex time, job sharing, telecommuting, cheap video conferencing, maternal (and paternal) leave policies, etc. Technology makes many things easier than ever before.

Or maybe it's the same? Young parents in my family have said they think it's easier. I don't think it's harder.

Stress, frantic schedules, pressure? It's all relative. I had plenty of those and more. Many in my generation had the same, still have it now. So too the generation before, and equally for today's new parents. Everyone deals with what they need to deal with in varying degrees of success.

You had a busy day? Pressure is getting to you? Distracted with lots on your mind? Sorry, none of that is an excuse for not giving unfailing attention to protecting your kids. That's my opinion, others can disagree.

I don't think anyone is saying it's an excuse. I am certainly not. There's nothing more important than a parent taking care of their child. I think everyone agrees there's no reason it should ever happen.

However, kids are dying because they are being left in cars. It's a fact, and calling the parents irresponsible doesn't change it. The only thing that might help is increased safety measures like some of the items being discussed. People are not going to suddenly change their parenting tactics or stop having babies so I don't see this problem going away anytime soon without some automated intervention.

What's interesting is that some of the parents who do this say later that they never thought it could happen to them. They could never forget their child. Until they did. That's why I think everyone should take precautions, even those who claim that they would never make this mistake.

I saw this the other day, and my first thought was, what a silly, ill-thought design. I don't think it will be very effective.

You turn the ignition off, it makes a noise. That's it? So every time you go somewhere, you can count on hearing a very annoying noise as soon as you turn the car off (to go with all the other annoying noises), because you can't possibly make it to the car seat to undo the baby before the noise starts.

In behaviour sciences / learning theory, it's clear that alert sounds and alarms can only modify behaviour if there is a correct action to take to prevent it, in this case there is not. Not to mention, over time the possibility of becoming desensitized to the "going to happen anyway" sound. It all seems very frustrating. I think it especially won't be effective because people will return the seats / throw them in the garbage.

The parents who care enough to buy this kind of seat are the ones who are most unlikely to forget their child. For the person who has similarly somehow forgotten the sound (perhaps gotten out of the car to get something out of the trunk first), this new seat doesn't do anything more for that child.

If I were designing a car seat with built-in protection, I would put a pressure sensor under the seat, a high tech thermometer sensing the air temperature, both connected to a transmitter with gps location. If a child is sitting in the seat and the car is over, say, something like 90 - 100 degrees or so, it puts out an immediate signal to police so they can come save the baby.

No logical person should find fault with the reason for this type of car seat. The reason for it is to save the life of a helpless child. Period. It doesn't matter if the child shouldn't NEED to be saved. We can all agree with that. It matters that they CAN be saved.