A parked car can reach dangerous temperatures within minutes in the summer. This past weekend, a 2-year-old was hospitalized after her father allegedly left her in an Antioch parking lot for 20 minutes.
The iPhone app sends an alert three minutes after GPS tells it the user has stopped traveling by car. Credit: Remember The Kids
But a new iPhone app called Remember The Kids created by Franklin resident Cody King is trying to prevent more cases like this. The app uses GPS to figure out when parents are driving, “and when you stop and your trip is over, it moves out of driving mode and that’s when it sends you an alert,” King says.
He says he came up with the idea after he was spacing out one day and realized that he could have forgotten his own toddlers.
But Davidson County police say this situation happens only sporadically, and nationwide, the number of kids killed in car crashes is exponentially higher. In 2011, 11 children under the age of 14 died from heatstroke in vehicles, while 650 children under the age of 12 died in crashes.
Still, Nashville father TJ McCloud downloaded the app last week, after he heard it had happened to a friend of a friend.
“It’s the off chance, it’s the weird day,” McCloud says. “I love my kids and I’m responsible, but I could make that mistake.”
McCloud had just gotten out of his car, and during our conversation, his phone beeped — had he remembered his kids? He tapped “no kids” and continued our conversation. The alerts can be a little annoying, he says, but it’s worth the trouble for the “peace of mind.”
Meanwhile, a new Tennessee law allows strangers to break a car window if they see children locked inside, after calling 9-1-1 first.
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