In 2017, a ten-year-old from North Texas named Bishop Curry designed a device called Oasis to help prevent children from dying in hot cars. The idea came after a baby in his community died when she was left in a vehicle. His prototype, a small box meant to sit by a child's car seat, was designed to sense rising heat, blow cool air and send alerts to parents and, if they did not respond, to emergency services. He and his family raised more than $29,000 online and applied for a patent.
Oasis was a concept and early model, not a tested safety product, and we found no public record of it reaching the market. But the problem it tackled is very real. On average, about 37 children a year in the United States die of heatstroke in vehicles. Here is Bishop's story, what the numbers say, and what actually helps.
How a fifth-grader got the idea
Bishop lived in the fast-growing suburbs north of Dallas. Early reports said McKinney, while a later one named nearby Melissa. The trigger was local news: a young child in his area had died after a parent accidentally left her in the family vehicle on a hot day. She was close in age to Bishop's own baby sister, which made the tragedy feel personal.
His father, an engineer who worked in process engineering at Toyota according to Canadian broadcaster CTV, helped him turn the sketch into something he could show people. Bishop called the device Oasis, a fitting name for something meant to bring cool air into a deadly heat trap.
Bishop Curry holds the bright pink early model of Oasis outside his family home in 2017. The model showed the size and shape he had in mind; the electronics were still to be developed. Image: local TV news footage via YouTube.
Away from the cameras, Bishop was an ordinary fifth-grader who loved football. Local TV crews filmed him playing outside while telling his story. Image: local TV news footage via YouTube.
What Oasis was designed to do
As Bishop and his family described it, Oasis would attach near the car seat. It would detect that the car had stopped with a child still in the seat. If the temperature began to climb, a fan would blow cool air toward the child while the device sent a notification to the parents' phones. If nobody responded, it would contact the authorities, using an antenna to send the alert.
Early reports called the prototype a 3D "clay" model, and the photos show a moulded pink casing rather than a working circuit. That is normal at this stage: inventors often start with a physical mock-up to test size and placement before building the sensors, battery and wireless parts. The family set up a GoFundMe page to pay for a working version and legal costs, and by June 2017 it had raised more than $29,000. They also filed paperwork with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and Fox News later described the patent as pending.
A close-up of the Oasis model, with a grid of hexagonal vents on the front where cool air would come out. The bold colour made it easy to spot inside a car. Image: local TV news footage via YouTube.
The model fixed to a headrest above a rear-facing child seat, the position Bishop imagined for the finished device. Rear-facing seats make a sleeping baby hard to see from the driver's seat, which is part of why children are forgotten. Image: local TV news footage via YouTube.
Bishop's hand wrapped around the model shows how compact he wanted the device to be, roughly the size of a large phone charger. Image: local TV news footage via YouTube.
What the numbers say about hot-car deaths
The figures quoted in 2017, around 712 deaths since 1998, came from the tracking project run by meteorologist Jan Null at NoHeatStroke.org. The count has kept rising. As of late September 2026, the site listed 1,070 children who had died of vehicular heatstroke in the U.S. since 1998, an average of 37 a year. There were 35 deaths in 2025 and 25 so far in 2026.
The breakdown is the most useful part. Of the cases from 1998 to 2025 with known circumstances:
- About 53% of children were forgotten by a caregiver, usually a loving parent whose routine had changed.
- About 24% got into an unlocked car on their own while playing and could not get out.
- About 22% were knowingly left in the vehicle by an adult, often "just for a minute".
Children are especially vulnerable because their bodies heat up faster than adults' and a closed car warms quickly even on a mild, sunny day. Cracking a window makes little difference.
Common myths about children in hot cars
"It only happens to bad parents." Most cases involve a caregiver who forgot, often after a change in routine, a stressful week or a sleeping child in a rear-facing seat. Memory researchers point out that habit can override intention, which is why reminders matter.
"It has to be very hot outside." Deaths have occurred on days in the 70s °F (low 20s °C), because sunlight through the glass heats the interior far above the outside temperature.
"A gadget will solve it." Devices like Oasis can help, but no single product is foolproof. Batteries run down, phones are silenced and sensors fail. Experts recommend combining technology with simple habits.
What has changed since 2017
Bishop was not the only person working on the problem. Many carmakers now offer rear-seat reminder systems that sound an alert when a rear door was opened before a trip, and some newer cars use radar or other sensors to detect a child left inside.
In 2021 Congress passed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which required the U.S. Department of Transportation to act on hot-car deaths, with a final rule due in November 2023. Safety group Kids and Car Safety reports that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has missed that deadline and later target dates, so a federal requirement for occupant detection in all new cars is still pending. We could not find a public update on whether Oasis itself moved beyond the prototype stage.
Habits that protect children today
- Make it a rule to open the back door and look every time you park, even if you think the car is empty.
- Put something you need, such as a bag, phone or work badge, on the floor of the back seat.
- Ask your childcare provider to call you if your child does not arrive as expected.
- Keep cars locked at home and keys out of reach, so children cannot climb in to play.
- Never leave a child alone in a car, even for a quick errand.
- If you see a child alone in a car, call emergency services straight away. If a child seems unwell after heat exposure, get urgent medical help.
Bishop Curry's invention may not have saved lives directly, but it pushed thousands of people to think about a preventable tragedy. Sometimes that is where change begins.
For another young inventor tackling a big problem, read about Hannah Herbst's ocean-energy prototype.
Sources: NoHeatStroke.org (Jan Null): Pediatric vehicular heatstroke deaths; CTV News, 22 June 2017; Fox News, August 2017; Kids and Car Safety: Hot cars, federal legislation and technology; original fundraiser: GoFundMe.
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