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to say nothing of Socks and Fifi
We can take as given the riff on parental responsibility, right? It's not Toyota's fault if your kid gets left in the car, but that's clearly where the suits will be directed when one of these systems fails. That's not what this post is about.
I suspect that most of those 61% don't care about the difference between worst-case cost and expected cost. While leaving a kid in a hot car for an hour is much much worse than leaving your headlights on for an hour, I submit that the probability is much much lower, or there'd be a lot more news stories about it and a lot fewer calls to AAA. The expected cost of the headlights is higher and carbuyers care, and that's why that alarm is standard equipment. No one but the market requires that makers put it there.
Speaking personally, the expected cost over, say, the next decade of my leaving a kid in my unattended hot car is 0. The expected cost of my leaving my headlights on is some positive fraction of $100 for a new battery and several hours of my time, at least one of which comes at a time when I, demonstrably, wanted to be somewhere else. 61% of poll responders would say "tough noogies" to me and wouldn't care if adding this device costs me hundreds of dollars. (I don't know what it costs.)
If that's what those voters truly believe, then they do not go far enough. If the goal is to prevent the deaths of those who can't see the danger or get out of the car themselves, then clearly it's not just about kids. Some adult passengers are unable to care for themselves and could die in hot cars too. I think it's actually more likely that an adult suffering from dementia would be ignored by passersby than that a kid would be. We don't think it's unusual for adults to sit in parked cars. Isn't gramps at least as important as an infant?
I predict that I'll get few takers from among the 61%; they would rightly say "you can't prevent everything". Yes, exactly. And given that, you have to cost-justify, and not just emotionally justify, the burden you would place on everyone else. Here's an idea: if you want a requirement, require that the device be built into the car seat, not the car. It'll be more expensive to do right (and be amortized over fewer buyers), but, well, it's the price we pay for safety, right?
Am I missing a sound argument in favor of requiring unattended-child alarms in all cars, or do all arguments boil down to "a possibility of one child's death is worth the certainty of $X in increased cost for everyone"?
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If such a safety system would really cost "hundreds", then it's probably not worth mandating for all cars, but I don't think that it would necessarily be so expensive. If it were installed in all cars rather than built into infant car seats, the cost per car would be much lower, especially since (a) infant car seats generally don't have 110-dB horns built in, (b) infant car seats get replaced much more often than cars, (c) a lot of "family" cars have toddler seats built into them anyway, and (d) economies of scale are your friend.
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Or "people should buy gadgets for their back seats if they deem it relevant". One of the devices mentioned in the article is apparently a small thing you can install in a couple minutes; the idea seems to be that you can take it anywhere. Parents should get some of those to keep in the diaper/toy/food/etc bag. But now I'm getting into personal responsibility.
(lucretia_borgia points out that since gramps is consuming Social Security money and a baby will [hopefully] grow up to pay into Social Security, it is economically better for society if we save the baby and leave gramps.)
I suppose that depends on how long you think Social Security will be relevant and how many resources the kid consumes on the way to paying in. Once you add up tax deductions, tuition credits, subsidized health care and food where relevant, etc, it's not obvious that gramps is the loser. :-)
I don't have good instincts on costs. I assume that the cheapest ones to produce have flaws, like over- or under-sensitivity. (For all the times I hear car alarms go off, I'm pretty sure mine did not go off when my car was actually broken into.) And I note that my electronic key/fob/etc would cost $150 to replace (according to the dealer); in a way that's just another portable transmitter/receiver. I'm not sure how you would implement this without some sort of a fob; tying it into the car directly (e.g. sound the alarm if the driver's door closes while the seat is still buckled) seems like it would be expensive, too. But I dunno; it's not my area, so I'm really just guessing. If the design is generic then economies of scale help.
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