Florida Grandma Invents Device to Prevent Hot Car Deaths

SOLO stands for Save Our Loved Ones and it was created with help from CMS Worldgroup in Clearwater, grandma Carol Staninger tells Fox 13. They’re a group that helps inventors take their ideas from the dreaming stage and into reality, and Carol heard about them on Fox 13.

“It seemed like every week there was a child that died in a car and I just started thinking about it. How could they detect a child in a car?” she says of how she came to think of such a device. “I wanted something that was fail-safe that could detect a living person through breathing, which is non-contact and automatic.”

SOLO can be easily mounted on the roof of the car and will detect the slightest movement inside. If the driver leaves and forgets a child, an elderly person or a dog inside, the movement will activate a visual and audio alarm. The latter is easily distinguishable from any other alarm.

“It sounds an alarm in an SOS cadence and it doesn't stop until someone comes back to the car and physically turns it off,” Staninger explains. The head of CMS Worldgroup says that the SOS sound is precisely what makes SOLO stand out from any other alarm. In other words, if anyone hears it, they will know there’s someone locked in a car, possibly in danger.

Staninger had to invest her children’s inheritance into the project, but she says it’s already a hit with local police. She is now hoping automakers will license SOLO and install it in their cars and, of course, to be able to put it up for commercial use.