Sometimes we can be forgetful, which is why there are instances in which you might have heard how sometimes parents put their toddlers or pets into the backseat of their cars, and when they reach their destination they can sometimes forget about it. This can be extremely dangerous but Nissan wants to solve that problem.
The company has announced a new feature called the Nissan Rear Door Alert (RDA) in which basically it reminds drivers to check their back seats whenever they get out of the car. How does this work? Basically when the car detects that you open the back door at the start of the trip (which assumes you might have put someone or something there) and that the back door is not opened at the end of the trip, it will alert the driver.
This will come in the form of a dashboard notification and also subtle chirps of the horn to let you know that you should check it, kind of like how there is a sound that lets you know when you’ve left your lights on. Developed by Nissan engineers Marlene Mendoza and Elsa Foley, the idea came about after a somewhat comical disaster involving lasagna that was accidentally left in the car’s back seat overnight.
According to Mendoza, “The idea was inspired when I accidentally left a pan of lasagna in the back seat of my car overnight. The worst thing was the car smelled for days, but it made me ask myself, ‘What if I left something far more important back there?'” Nissan’s RDA feature is expected to become a standard feature on all Nissan four-door vehicles by 2022, but in the meantime some of 2019’s models are expected to get the feature already.
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