Towards the end of TFL Car’s review of the 2019 Hyundai Santa Fe, I caught a glimpse of Hyundai’s rear occupant alert in action.
This is the first time I’ve actually seen this technology play out in a “real life scenario” of sorts and mark my words, this will be standard on all cars, trucks, and SUV’s sooner than later. As per The Fast Lane Truck in their review of the 2019 Hyundai Santa Fe that popped up on my Youtube feed earlier this week (Oct. 3,2018) TFL Car presenter Roman demonstrated this, I hate to admit it, life-saving tech in action. Check out the video for yourself below as I’ve already fast forwarded it.
Dubbed “Rear Seat Occupant Alert” as Roman demonstrates and points out, there is this funny looking sensor at the rear of the 2019 Hyundai Santa Fé. Standard, according to Hyundai,
The system monitors the rear seats using an ultrasonic sensor that helps to detect the movements of children and pets. The system first reminds drivers to check the rear seats when exiting the vehicle with a message on the center instrument cluster display. If the system detects movement in the rear seats after the driver leaves the vehicle it will honk the horn, flash the lights and send a Blue Link alert to the driver’s smartphone via Hyundai’s Blue Link connected car system.
And sure enough, when Roman jostles around a bit in the Santa Fe with the doors locked, the Santa Fe blares its horn in a loud and annoying way to anyone passing by. Even with just the horns, I’m immediately impressed by this clever bit of tech.
CNN reports that, on average, 36 kids die every year from being forgotten in a hot car and presumably dozens of more pets die each year in a similar manner.
This may seem like a recent way for kids to unfortunately die but I reckon this has been a problem since cars were a thing, only now after social media took off do these problems get the attention they deserve.
And, as per usual, it’s usually tragedies that bring tech like this into the mainstream. Just a couple of months ago, back up cameras weren’t required in new cars, but after one father suffered the horrible experience of running over his own kid, legislation stemming from that incident directly resulted in mandatory back up cameras. That was in 2007 and eleven long years later, that boy’s unfortunate death is now not in vain for perpetuity.
It should be noted that Hyundai isn’t the only car company to have this tech. According to RedTri.com, almost all GM cars have a similar tech that uses weight sensors, still, as effective.
I imagine that this rear seat occupant alert system is just a sensor and lots of lines of code. negligible to the consumer or the Santa Fe’s performance. Perhaps this code, along with GM’s, can be open source for all car manufacturers to add ASAP.
Source: TFL Car
