Walmart Selling Car Seat That Alerts Parents When A Child Is Left Behind

(Evenflo)

Every summer, we can’t help but wonder why there aren’t more product solutions to the disturbing, but all too familiar, incidents involving children left behind in hot cars, often resulting in death. There’s at least one new product on the market this season that uses technology to alert parents before they accidentally leave their child in the vehicle, a car seat that’s now being sold online by Walmart.

The Evenflo Advanced SensorSafe Embrace infant seat uses a wireless receiver that plugs into a car’s on board diagnostic port, and syncs with a chest clip that goes around the baby (other companies’ products rely on Bluetooth or cellular technology, Evenflo points out).

Once the car turns off, if the chest clip is still buckled, a series of tones will ring out and alert the driver.

The product sells for $149.88 and is only being sold online now — though as of Friday morning, it appeared that all of the new Evenflo car seats with the hot car alert system are out of stock on Walmart.com. It’ll hit Walmart store shelves next month.

The company says it’s the only alert system that’s been crash-tested by Evenflo and will be exclusive to Walmart.

“There are millions of cars in our parking lots every day and we put a challenge out to the industry,” said Diana Marshall, vice president for baby at Walmart told the New York Post. “Evenflo stepped up with a first-of its kind product aimed at vehicular heat stroke.”

On average, 38 children die in hot cars each year from heat-related deaths after being trapped inside vehicles, according to KidsAndCars.org.

Just this week, strangers prevented a potential hot car death in Kansas, when the manager of a shoe store and others bashed open a car window to free a crying toddler locked inside.

And if you need a reminder of what it’s like for a child to be trapped in a hot car, there’s always this video of a father filming himself inside a vehicle with temperatures soaring.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist