Wal-Mart's new car seat for children aims to prevent heat-related deaths.
The Evenflo Advanced Embrace DLX Infant Car Seat with SensorSafe, Peridot is a car seat that starts beeping once the car is in park "and only stops once the child is unbuckled out of the car seat," significantly reducing the chance of a child being forgotten in the back seat and dying of heat stroke, Mashable reported.
According to the advocacy group Kids and Cars, as of July 15 this year 17 children had already died in hot vehicles. In the last 20 years, more than 670 cases of hot car child deaths had occurred.
"It's a heartbreaking tragedy when children die of heat stroke from being left in a vehicle," Christopher Vaccaro, a spokesperson for the National Weather Service, told Mashable. "It's critical for parents and caretakers to never leave a child in a vehicle, which can quickly get dangerously hot -- even on a cool, cloudy day, nor for any length of time."
The new car seat, which will start selling for just under $150, will also emit a sound when the seat belt comes unbuckled during the ride, Mashable reported.
"This car seat will eliminate the chance of a baby being forgotten in a car," Sarah McKinney, Wal-Mart's director of corporate communications, told Yahoo Parenting. "Our hope is that no one would ever need the SensorSafe system, but the reality is that one child dies every nine days" from being left in a car."
Reggie told CBS News that he lost his daughter in 2010 to hot car death when he left her in the car while he went to work.
"All I heard was myself screaming, and it just seemed like time had stopped and I was holding my daughter. That moment was always on my mind 24-7. It was really hard to function, to do anything even remotely normal," the father of three said. "When I lost Peyton on that tragic day, in my mind I am saying, 'How could I let this happen?'"
Every nine days a child die from being left in a car, according to Evenflo.
