Every summer seems to bring tragic stories of adults who forget their children are still seated in the back of the car. When temperatures climb, this often proves fatal.
Nissan is doing its part to solve the problem by introducing a new Rear Door Alert system which reminds owners to check the rear seats.
Set to become standard equipment on the 2018 Pathfinder, the system monitors the rear door switches to determine whether or not the doors have been opened or closed. When the system determines a rear door was opened and closed at the beginning of a journey but hasn’t been opened and closed when the trip is complete, it will display a warning message in the instrument cluster. If the driver fails to respond, the vehicle’s horn will sound a series of “subtle but distinctive chirps.”
Since there are many scenarios where this could become annoying, the system can easily be temporarily deactivated. Customers can also deactivate the system entirely if desired.
According to Nissan’s Marlene Mendoza, “The idea is if you open a rear door, whether to put a child or a package in the rear seat, the vehicle will help alert you when you get to your destination that you may want to check the rear seat.” She added “We’ve built in enough time that you don’t have to rush, but if you don’t open the rear door again when you get out of the vehicle, we want you to think for a moment about what you may have put in the back seat.”
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