Nissan Rear Door Alert Reminds You Of The Ice You Left Behind

Summer can be dangerous. That's how Nissan opens its spiel for its newest Intelligent Safety Shield Technology. People have been known to collapse from the heat and food can spoil and ice can melt inside cars' back seats when left forgotten. While there's little technology can do with the former, Nissan's engineers have plenty to say about the latter. That is why the car maker will be rolling out its new Rear Door Alert system to the Pathfinder next month to make sure you leave nothing or no one behind.

In nutshell, the Rear Door Alert, or RDA, sounds an audible alarm when you walk away from the car and left something on the backseat. And how does it know? Not with fancy cameras or a whole host of advanced sensors. It simply remembers when you last opened and closed your rear door.

Here's how it works. The RDA marks when you opened and closed a door before you drive off. After the trip, if you lock the driver side door without opening and closing the rear door again. In that case, it will sound an alarm that is audibly distinct from a regular anti-theft alarm. Just enough to call your attention but not to alert the whole neighborhood.

So the Nissan RDA doesn't really know if you have left something at the back, only that you opened and closed the door at least once. It won't know if you simply threw your stuff from the front or if you just opened and closed the door for some other purpose. Optionally, you can choose to disable the alarm temporarily or permanently.

It's really a case of using simple things to be smart, while not actually being smart. Still, Nissan believes strongly enough in this new feature that it will be rolling it out to the Canadian models of the 2018 Pathfinder SUV in September. That Pathfinder will also be getting the Automatic Emergency Braking system, which Nissan will be offering as a standard feature for 2018 models in Canada.

SOURCE: Nissan