This Alarm Helps Pregnant Women Find a Seat

In an ideal world, a visible baby bump should almost always guarante you a seat on public transportation, even during rush hour. But there’s often extenuating circumstances. Maybe you’re not really showing yet. Or maybe your fellow passengers are too glued to their phone screens to worry about things like common courtesy. One city is taking a high-tech approach to tackle this problem, installing “pregnancy alarms” near designated priority seating.

Here’s how it works: As a part of the Pink Light Campaign, pregnant women in Busan, South Korea, can register for a wireless “beacon,” a small keychain-like fob device that easily attaches to a purse. When a woman with a beacon approaches priority seating on the Busan-Gimhae Light Rail Transit system, a pink light will turn on and make a noise, indicating any non-pregnant or able-bodied passengers sitting there should give up their seat.

Sound familiar? It’s a more high-tech version of the UK’s ‘Baby on Board’ badge: a button intended to let fellow passengers know a woman is pregnant and in need of priority seating without any sort of confrontation. But in South Korea, the campaign serves a secondary purpose: to boost the country’s birth rate. According to the World Bank, South Korea has an extremely low birth rate: 1.2 births per woman. (For reference, the United States has a birth rate of 1.88 births per woman.)

Currently, only a few segments of the Busan public transportation system include the new pink lights, but the city plans to expand the program.