The warmer months are upon us, and two Florida dads have teamed up to create a device that could save your child’s life.
Pharmacist Fadi Shamma, along with his Tampa neighbor and electrical engineer Jim Friedman, developed Sense-a-Life to help reduce the number of children left in hot cars.
“This is a one-time purchase that will keep a child safe forever,” said Shamma, who has a 4-year-old and a 20-month-old.
Sense-A-Life is a standalone device that takes less than 20 seconds to install into a car, Shamma told Care.com.
“There’s no wiring into the car or the child’s car seat,” he said. “We wanted it to be hassle-free so that caregivers can easily switch out the device from car to car.”
Sense-A-Life can also be used for pets, he said.
A small device is attached to the driver’s side door, along with a small pad activated by 2 pounds of pressure that is placed underneath a child’s car seat.
When a driver opens the door, the car seat pad sends a signal to the sensor that tells the driver to “please remove child.” If the child is not removed, a second and third alert via the Sense-a-Life app will continue to notify the parent and, eventually, an emergency contact, to ensure the child is safely removed from the car.
“We want three lines of defense to ensure that the child is always safe,” Shamma said of the patent-pending technology.
More than 600 children died from 1998 to 2015 as a result of heatstroke after being left in a hot car, with nearly half being “forgotten” by their caregiver, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Just last month, a 2-year-old boy died in Brandon, Florida, after he was left in a hot SUV for five hours.
Shamma and his business partner said, for now, they’re working closely with KidsinCars.org as they lobby legislators to pass the Hot Cars Act, in hopes the measure will mandate a device such as Sense-a-Life or a similar technology in all new cars.
“As parents, we don’t want to see anyone hurt,” Shamma said. “We want to make sure every child and pet are safe at all times.”
The mechanism is in the final production stages, and Sense-a-Life is gearing up to sell the product at online retailers.
“We have sensors in our car that tell us, ‘Hey, your coffee mug is getting cold,'” Shamma said. “Is that really worth more than a child’s life? I don’t think so.”
Sense-A-Life is available for preorder here.
