At least 9 children have died in a hot car in the U.S. this year. Why this happens, according to experts.

Yahoo

4 hours ago

Nine children have died in hot cars across the U.S. so far this year. In March, a 4-month-old who was supposed to be dropped off at a babysitter's home in New Jersey was forgotten in a minivan for two hours. On Sunday, a 4-year-old was found inside a hot car after being reported missing in Georgia. It's a preventable tragedy that makes dozens of headlines every spring and summer.
Nearly 40 children die in hot cars each year, according to data compiled by Kids and Car Safety, a national nonprofit that fights for child safety in and around vehicles. Since 1990, more than 1,000 kids have died from overheating in a car somewhere in the U.S.
In 2024, 39 kids died in hot cars, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), down from 2018 and 2019, when a record-breaking 53 children died in hot cars. Excluding car crashes, heatstroke is the leading cause of death in vehicles for children 14 and younger.
The majority of hot car deaths happen because the driver forgets the child is in the car, according to the NHTSA. The federal agency has found that 47% of these deaths happen when the caregiver has forgotten to drop those children off at day care or school, and it usually happens at the end of the workweek, on Thursdays or Fridays. The second leading cause is when unsupervised children get into unattended vehicles on their own.
'The majority of parents and caregivers are misinformed and would like to believe that they could never 'forget' their child in a vehicle,' Kids and Car Safety notes. 'The most dangerous mistake a parent or caregiver can make is to think leaving a child alone in a vehicle could never happen to them or their family.'
Children who get trapped in cars suffer from pediatric vehicular heatstroke, which happens when the child's body temperature rises because of the internal temperature of a car. For example, if the outside temperature is around 70°F, the inside of a car's temperature will increase to over 100°F within the first 30 minutes. A child's body will overheat three to five times faster than an adult's body, according to the Columbia University Irving Medical Center.
More often than not, caregivers leave children in hot cars by accident, which is why they're usually not charged with murder, David Diamond, a psychology professor at the University of South Florida, told Yahoo News. Diamond has studied cases of children dying in hot cars for 20 years.
'These are not parents who don't care about their kids,' Diamond said. 'Everyone can relate to forgetting. It's something that we all do.'
Diamond says parents leave their kids in overheating cars because of habit and routine. The 'habit brain memory system' kicks in when people perform repetitive tasks almost automatically or without a second thought. Diamond has said that knowing how to ride a bike or tie shoelaces are examples of habit brain memory.
'You're driving home from work, and you've done it hundreds of times by yourself,' Diamond explained to Yahoo News. 'It's your brain's habit memory system that takes you from work to home without even having to think about it. You drive straight home.'
Even if parents feel confident that they will remember their child is in the back seat and needs to be dropped off somewhere before they get to the office, the habit brain memory system can overpower that new addition to a routine they've done hundreds of times without the child, Diamond said.
He emphasized this is not a 'syndrome' or rare mental disorder, but something most people experience because it's how the brain functions. It does not mean the parent or caregiver doesn't love their child.
''Forgetting' really is the right word,' he said of situations where parents leave their kids in hot cars. But 'forgetting' the child because of routine doesn't alleviate any severity or pain from the experience for those parents. 'It truly is a form of forgetting. And that's as simple as it is. It is a catastrophe."
Creating relevant safety laws is crucial to helping parents protect their children in these situations, Amber Rollins, director of Kids and Car Safety, told Yahoo News.
Rollins cited data dating back to 1990 that shows children died less frequently from airbags while sitting in the front seat of a car after states made it illegal for kids under 13 to ride in the passenger seat. (It also wasn't required in all states for kids to ride in car seats until 1985.) But as more children were placed in the back seats of cars to avoid airbag deaths, kids were instead dying of heatstroke because they were forgotten in the car.
This is why groups like Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety, Safe Kids Worldwide, the Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association and Kids and Car Safety are advocating for it to be mandatory for car manufacturers to build in radar systems that help notify parents if their kids are still sitting in the back seat. Part of the argument for why radar should be built into the cars — instead of tools parents can order online and install themselves — is, as Diamond told Yahoo News, because most people do not believe they would ever forget their child in the back seat of the car and wouldn't buy it.
'The best kind of solution available right now is radar detection,' Rollins said. 'It's a little chip that goes into the headliner or the roof of the vehicle, and it detects micro-movements … it can tell the difference between an adult and a child based on micro-movements … and so, effectively, it can tell, 'Hey, there's a kid in here, and I don't see a grown-up, we've got a problem.''
Kids and Car Safety coordinated with members of Congress on the federal Hot Cars Act, which was passed by the House of Representatives in 2021. The act then evolved into a provision under the Child Safety section in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which was signed into law in November 2021. The provision requires that the Secretary of Transportation 'issue a rule that requires all new passenger motor vehicles to be equipped with a child safety alert system 'not later than 2 years after the date of enactment of this section,' which would have been December 2023.
A spokesperson for the NHTSA told Yahoo News that the organization is still conducting studies to ensure that the radar devices currently available are actually effective. But, according to Rollins, the NHTSA has not made enough effort to put this rule into effect across all car manufacturers.
Some tools, such as end-of-trip detectors and rear occupant alerts, which use sensors and are built into some cars already, are not as accurate as radar detection, Rollins said.
A concern is that if the technology is faulty and alerts parents over every small thing in the back of their car, parents might feel inclined to turn it off, Rollins said.
Rollins argued that there are existing radar detection devices that have passed multiple tests and should be installed. The technology needs to exclusively flag if children are unattended in the back of a car. (Some Genesis, Volvo, Toyota and Hyundai cars do have radar detectors installed.)
'The agency will continue to test additional systems as they become available to the public,' the NHTSA spokesperson said.
It's common for parents to believe they would never forget their children in the back seat of their car. Here are some tips from Sanford Health on how to ensure you remember your child is in the back.
Put something in the back seat of your car with your child that you need before leaving the vehicle, like a cell phone, one of your shoes or an employee badge — something you need when you arrive at your destination.
Keep a stuffed animal in your child's car seat and move it to the front of the car while driving your child as a reminder that they are in the car with you.
Ask your babysitter or child care provider to give you a call if your child is expected to show up somewhere but hasn't arrived.
Always check that your car is locked and inspect it before leaving the premises — even if you're in a rush. This can help you double-check nobody is in the back seat and addresses the second cause of children dying in hot cars, which is when they climb in unattended and unsupervised.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated that NHTSA was involved in the Hot Cars Act.