Heat Safety & Prep

Hot Car Deaths Could Be Prevented By E-Z Baby Saver, Created By Andrew Pelham, 12-Year-Old Nashville Boy

A photo shows the E-Z Baby Saver across the driver's door.
(ezbabysaver.com)

Andrew Pelham might only be 12 years old, but he's already thinking like an adult.

With more than three dozen children killed in hot cars on average every year, Pelham sought out to develop a device that would remind parents about their kid in the back seat. He named it the E-Z Baby Saver – a contraption so simple, it can be made at home from rubber bands and duct tape, and Pelham even made a short video tutorial that shows parents how to build it.

Photo shows Andrew Pelham, the young Tennessee creator behind E-Z Baby Saver.
(ezbabysaver.com)

"Lots of different things happened to help me come up with this idea," Pelham, who lives in suburban Nashville, told Access Atlanta. "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."

(MORE: Missing Baby Girl Found in Bushes, Still in Car Seat)

Here's how the E-Z Baby Saver works. One end is hooked to the back of the driver's seat, and the other end is secured to the interior door handle on the driver's side. Then, when a parent opens the door to get out of the vehicle, the device blocks him or her from getting out without the obvious reminder that there's a child in the back seat.

His idea first came to life at the Rubber Band Contest for Young Inventors, held annually in Akron, Ohio, where each participant must use rubber bands in his or her invention, according to News 2. The device won Pelham second place in the competition and a $500 prize.

(MORE: 'Freak Accident' Kills Two Young Twin Girls)

Pelham's idea for remembering to remove children from hot cars is one of several getting attention as these tragic deaths increase in frequency during the hot summer months. News-press.com writer Melanie Payne recently started a social media campaign called #NEVERLEFT that suggests drivers place their left shoe in the back seat of the car to force them to go into the back seat prior to leaving the car every time.

In 2014, 13 children have died in hot cars in the United States, according to statistics kept by the Department of Geosciences at San Francisco State University. June, July and August are typically the months when hot-car deaths spike.

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