Quite recently, Internet was flooded with news regarding toddlers dying due to being left in the cars unattended. Though seemingly rare, you would be surprised to know that such horrific accidents took place because the parent, in the spur of the moment, forgot that the baby was in the baby seat of the car. We can’t really relate to what trauma the parents must be going through. The idea behind this post is not to demotivate you or to depress you but to appreciate how, a 12 year old boy observing these incidents, decided to do something about this and came up with an amazing invention that makes use of rubber bands and a duct tape to prevent such accidents from happening. The invention has been named as E-Z Baby Saver and works by being affixed to the interior of the car so that the driver can’t exit the vehicle without removing the contraption and doing so forces you to check the back seat.
Andrew Pelham from the Nashville, the genius behind the innovation, says; ‘Lots of different things happened to help me come up with this idea. I read a newspaper article about a woman who accidentally left her child in the car and the child died. It made me want to come up with an idea to prevent this. That’s a sad way to die. I decided to see if I could come up with something.’
According to scientists, this negligence can take place at the hands of any parent and in fact, last year 26 deaths were caused due to this in USA only. This is partly because of the fact that the baby seats are no longer forward facing and therefore, it is quite likely for the parent to overlook the fact that the baby is in the back seat. Andrew visited the Rubber band Contest for Young Inventors that was hosted by The Akron Global Polymer Academy at the University of Akron. In his own words; ‘I thought of the inventions I could have made with the rubber bands. I thought something that could save lives would be better than an automatic baseball thrower.’
He launched the invention when he was in fifth grade (now he is in 7th) and earned the national runner-up honors in Engineering and Science category along with a trophy and $500 cash prize. ‘You’re basically making a string of rubber bands and covering it with a tube of duct tape.’ Says Andrew.
Andrew explains how parents could overlook the fact that there’s a baby in the car and says; ‘It mainly happens when people are going to be doing something else and it gets the parents’ system out of the ordinary. Teaching people to make the E-Z Baby Saver is one way I can serve others.’ Owing to this statement he has not patented the E-Z Baby Saver. We believe such inventions should be encouraged and made compulsory for the parents to install in their cars.
