Is Heat Guard a Good Idea?

In today's Contemporary Moral Issues class, I had an opportunity to listen to the group Heat Guard present. Their presentation raised the moral issue of people dying in hot and cold cars. According to their presentation 9,000 people, a year are injured, and an average of about 40 children die each year from being left in cars with extreme temperature. This is largely due to the fact children’s ability to sweat is not fully developed, which causes children heat up 3 to 5 times faster than an adult. This has led to 19 states having unattended child laws to protect the children.

Heat Guard's solution to this problem is installing a facial recognition software into their cars to allow them to detect if anyone is left in the car at extreme temperatures. The car would then contact the police or turn on the car's cooling/heating system. The car would require a different type of battery to be installed in the car that should only cost about $150.

This presentation was very well researched. There was virtually no question you could ask them that they hadn’t researched to find the answer of. They even decided to research to see if there had been any patents covering this design but were only able to find designs based on weight and seat belt sensors, which they described as unreliable.

However, I do find an issue with spending this much money to protect the children. If we take the estimated amount of cost given during their presentation which was $150 and multiply it by the number of cars sold in 2016, which was 17.6 million we get 2,640,000,000 or 2.64 billion. This large number is the amount that will be spent every year on preventing an average of 40 deaths. If you wanted to look at things as objectively as possible this idea would only save 1 child for every 66 million dollars spent. While it may seem heartless to view this as purely an idea of money that is what most things come down to. I see this as for every dollar spent on funding this idea is a dollar that isn’t spent fighting this same problem in a more effective way. Not to mention all cars would not be equipped with this until 15 years later when the average of the lifespan of a car ends. This means that all children’s deaths from overheating will not be stopped until we spend 39.6 billion dollars, plus 2.64 billion a year to maintain this number. While you could argue that this cost will go down over time I do not see this being possible unless they integrate it into the software of a car without adding any hardware. But even then, I still don’t know if I’d be convinced.  This is because some people would buy this product with the full intention of leaving their child in the car or at least be more likely to since the car turns on the heating/ cooling system when needed. This neglect could become the new social norm, which would be very dangerous.

I know that being left in a car is a serious issue to allot, but this seems to cost too much for the consumer when you look at the actual effect. To me, this issue seems neglectful when you look at the other problems we could be dealing with. While this may seem harsh, but I would argue that 150 people die each year from falling coconuts, and we’re not getting rid of coconuts.

Overall, I did enjoy their presentation. It was very informative and well put together. You could tell the group worked very hard, and each one of them sounded like they know what they were talking about. Hopefully, they are able to find a solution that only changes the car's software, and promotes people not leaving children in the car.