New Waze Feature Reminds You That Your Child is in the Car

Via The Verge:

Navigational app Waze might help give you directions on the road, but it’s now poised to help with a real problem: children left in hot cars. The company has introduced a new feature designed to remind drivers to not forget a child.

Waze has introduced a new feature: Child Reminder, which will appear once the vehicle reaches its destination by displaying a reminder not to forget a child in the car.

According to advocacy site KidsandCars.com, ever year an average of 29 children passed away from heatstroke in vehicles since 1990. While municipalities, businesses, and hospitals issue warnings to parents and drivers, children still perish.

The customizable notification means that the user can set a reminder for more than just children once they reach their destination: a reminder for a pets, groceries, or simply something that they need to remember to do after a long car trip. The feature is currently in beta and isn’t widely available just yet.

I will freely admit to worrying about doing this when my daughter was young, but it was just one of those “worst case scenario” parental panic things. I never once was unaware that my child was in the car, and I may be one of the more scatterbrained and forgetful people in the history of parenting.

On the one hand, any voluntary thing that promotes safety isn’t a bad idea, especially for busy, stressed parents. On the other, are the kinds of people who really need this feature likely to use it? If you can forget your kid, it’s probably real easy to forget setting a reminder on the phone.

It is probably more realistic, and horrific (especially on hot days), to think that people who leave kids in the car know full well that they’re doing it and not forgetting at all. Some people have a rose-colored glasses approach to parenting. Some people just aren’t that into it. Then again, maybe some do legitimately forget.

Again though, every little opt-in child safety thing can be helpful, so kudos to Waze for thinking outside the box and trying to lend a hand.