NHTSA said it is initiating rulemaking that would require vehicles to have a system that reminds the driver to check the back seat at the end of a drive, analyzing more sophisticated technology that would detect and alert parents if a child is in the back seat, and assessing the one rear seat occupant detection system the agency has acquired. The agency said it will continue to test other systems as they become publicly available and is looking into retrofitting existing cars with rear-seat alert systems.
People will ignore it just like they do anything else that’s automatic.
Why not do something more useful like require some kind of ventilation and fan (on a separate battery) when a car is off to keep the car from turning into a hotbox? I recognize that a car sitting for a week would probably kill that battery, but if you could recharge it on a reasonable drive and target like 12 hours of charge it seems like it could make a meaningful difference in at least less extreme scenarios.