2018 Nissan Pathfinder To Introduce Rear Door Alert To Keep The Kiddies Safe

To help those who have a habit of forgetting the items – or in more dire cases, their children – that they put in the car's rear seat, Nissan is introducing a Rear Door Alert system, starting with the 2018 Pathfinder and filtering throughout the range.

This technology utilizes the sensors on the rear doors to detect if the driver has opened one of them before they start the journey. If they have, but fail to reopen the door after completing the trip, a warning is displayed in the instrument cluster once the car is in Park and the ignition is off. If the driver ignores the warning and starts to walk away from the vehicle, then the Pathfinder automatically generates a subdued chirp of the horn, which is a step up on the rival systems available in a range of General Motors products.

Nissan's move is the latest in a push to keep kids safe in hot summer conditions. On an average, 37 children die from heat-related conditions after getting trapped inside an unattended car every year, according to KidsAndCars.org. In less serious cases, it could prevent owners from forgetting a pint of ice cream or a case of soda. While the RDA system will be standard on all the trims of the updated Pathfinder, which goes on sale next month, it can be temporarily or permanently turned off anytime.

"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," Marlene Mendoza, the Nissan engineer who presented the RDA idea, said in a release. "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."

While RDA will arrive on the upcoming Pathfinder, it eventually filter down to other Nissan products in the coming years. Which vehicles will be included in the move are unclear, although family-oriented offerings like the Murano, Rogue, and Armada SUVs seem like the most logical candidates. We also wouldn't be surprised to see RDA arrive in vehicles from Nissan's premium Infiniti line, like the QX50, QX60, and QX80 crossovers.