Rear cargo reminder system

A rear cargo reminder system comprising:

• a vehicle having a passenger compartment with a rear seat;
• a front door fixed to the vehicle for movement between an open orientation and a closed orientation;
• a front door sensor configured to detect opening movement and closing movement of the front door;
• a rear door attached to the vehicle for movement between an open orientation providing access to the rear seat and a closed orientation;
• a rear door sensor installed within the vehicle and configured to detect opening movement and closing movement of the rear door;
• a transmission shifter mechanism;
• a shifter position sensor installed to the vehicle and configured to detect a current position of the transmission shifting device;
• an alerting device configured to provide an alarm signal;
• and
• a controller operably connected to each of the front door sensor, the rear door sensor, the shifter position sensor and the alerting device, the controller operating in the absence of detection of conditions of an ignition switch of the vehicle and in the absence of detection of operating state of an engine of the vehicle, such that in response to the controller detecting a sequence of events based on detection of movement of the front door via the front door sensor, movement of the rear door via signals from the rear door sensor and current position of the transmission shifting mechanism via the shifter position sensor, the controller determines whether or not the vehicle operator has potentially left an object beside or on the rear seat of the passenger compartment, and in response to determining that the vehicle operator has potentially left an object beside or on the rear seat of the passenger compartment the controller operates the alerting device to provide the alarm signal to the vehicle operator, the controller operating in the absence of an occupancy sensor such as a microphone, a temperature sensor, a seat weight sensor, movement sensor or any other type of sensor configured to detect the presence or absence of an occupant within the vehicle.