The technology to prevent hot car deaths exists. Why isn’t it standard?

Legislative efforts to prevent these tragic deaths started in 2017 when Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, introduced the Hot Car Act. Blumenthal’s bill eventually became law four years later when it was included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passed under President Joe Biden.

The law ordered the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to write a rule by November 2023 that would require automakers to include technology that detects movement in idle cars and alerts drivers. But no such rule exists even three years after the deadline.

Hot car deaths in America have killed 95 babies since then, according to Kids and Car Safety, an organization that tracks hot car infant deaths each year.

Advocates say a 2019 voluntary agreement from major automakers, including Hyundai, to standardize door-logic technology in their models has been used as an excuse for NHTSA to stall on mandating sensors that can determine when a child has been left in a car.

Door-logic software, called “end-of-trip reminders,” identifies when a rear door is opened for any reason before a car turns on and activates a dashboard chime and alerts a driver’s phone to check the back seat once the car is turned off. Critics of the technology say this can lead to “alert fatigue” from drivers who will stop taking the notifications seriously.

Amber Rollins, the executive director of Kids and Car Safety, called the agreement an “obvious attempt to avoid a regulation.” She said her organization has documented 15 cases where babies died in cars that had door-logic technology.

A spokesman for Hyundai told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the company has expanded its rear-seat reminders across its lineup of vehicles and that it will continue to offer new safety technologies as they become available.

For example, the company said, Hyundai is introducing an advanced system that can detect movement inside a locked vehicle in some of its offerings.

“While no single technology can eliminate every risk, Hyundai believes these systems can play an important role in promoting rear-seat awareness,” the company said.

A spokesman for the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an industry group, said in a statement that automakers are being proactive in adding reminders for drivers to check the backseat.

“The technology is now ubiquitous across the vehicle fleet – an important step in addressing pediatric vehicular heatstroke, in addition to public education and awareness,” the group said.

Georgia attorney Jim Butler, who was the lead attorney in two lawsuits against Ford Motor Co. that ended in verdicts against the automaker totaling more than $4 billion, said NHTSA “rarely adopts regulations opposed by the auto industry.”

Cooper Lohr, a policy analyst for Consumer Reports, called the language that passed in the Infrastructure Act a “pared-down version” of Blumenthal’s original Hot Cars Act and said it allowed for NHTSA to possibly rule door logic the safety standard — if it does ever make a ruling — rather than the rear-occupant sensing many are lobbying for.

An NHTSA spokesperson said the act required the agency “to evaluate retrofit and aftermarket systems, assess their costs and benefits and provide safety guidance to” customers and automakers. Retrofit and aftermarket systems are devices that would be added to vehicles after they were purchased to alert parents of a child left in the back seat.

The agency’s study found that these devices sometimes gave false positives and negatives in the detection of a child and sometimes failed to alert drivers’ phones when a child was detected.

Rear-seat-occupant-detection technology made directly by automakers has existed for about eight years. Hyundai rolled out its Ultrasonic Rear Occupant Alert in 2018, and Kia Motors quickly followed.

Emily Thomas, associate director of auto safety at Consumer Reports, said ultrasonic sensors detect large movements, so while these systems can detect that something has moved in the back seat after a car turns off, they do not distinguish if that something was a child.

In-cabin radar sensors, which Thomas said were first implemented by Genesis in 2022, are able to detect “smaller, physiologic movements” such as a child breathing even if they are wrapped under a blanket. Toyota, Audi and Volvo, as well as Hyundai and Kia, are among companies that have incorporated these sensors in some newer models, she said.

But those features are offered at a premium, which not everyone can afford, Rollins noted.

“That’s why these safety standards are so important,” Rollins said. “Every child deserves to be safe, no matter what vehicles their family can afford.”

NHTSA says its study on radar technology is incomplete and will publish in the coming months, although it published some preliminary results based on tests of Genesis and Toyota models. The study says the sensing devices “do not all behave the same nor do they have the same reliability” and that both brands’ cars failed to alert drivers when a CPR dummy, used to simulate a child, was left in the car after it turned off.

Lohr said NHTSA should not let “perfect be the enemy of good” as it waits for the existing technology to improve.

“The benefits of deploying a baseline standard for a technology that can save lives far outweigh the value of waiting years for a ‘perfect’ system,” he said.

In June, Rosenthal wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation urging NHTSA to finally make the ruling they were legally required to almost three years ago.

And Ford — the attorney, no relation to the motor company or its founding father — is attempting a new legislative approach to get radar technology standardized. The lawyer stood outside the Gwinnett County Courthouse on Tuesday morning and pleaded with Congress to sponsor his proposed “Zero Hot Car Infant Deaths Act.”

Ford is representing Deja Coleman, who is facing second-degree murder charges in the death of her 1-year-old son. Coleman’s son, Daniel, died July 29 after she forgot to drop him off at daycare and left him in the back seat of her car as she worked in a Gwinnett hospital, police said.

The legislation would bypass government agencies and directly require automakers to include back-seat radar sensors in every new car made in America. Ford said the cost to include 60 gigahertz microradar sensors at the manufacturing stage is estimated between $10-$40.

The attorney said he spoke to Ossoff’s office about his proposal, calling the senator a “consumer advocate,” citing his work in strengthening car seat safety for children, and “the most logical candidate here in Georgia” to sponsor the bill.

A spokesperson for Ossoff said the senator “always welcomes legislative ideas from Georgians, and like all proposals we receive from constituents, Ossoff and his team will carefully review this idea.”