Texas Health Steps

Child Heatstroke Deaths in Hot Vehicles: An Overview

Many of the tragic stories of children left in vehicles resulted from parents going into auto-pilot mode and forgetting to drop off a child. This can happen to anyone. The brain is programmed to mindlessly complete habitual tasks.

National Safety Council, n.d.
thermometer reading over 100 degrees

After vehicle crashes, heatstroke is the leading cause of vehicle-related deaths for children 14 years and younger (American Academy of Pediatrics [AAP], 2020). Nearly every death occurred because a child had been left in a vehicle or had become trapped inside of one.

Pediatric vehicular heatstroke happens when a child’s body is not able to cool itself quickly enough inside a hot vehicle. Vehicles heat up fast. The temperature can rise 20 degrees in 10 minutes and cracking a window does little to keep things cool once the vehicle is turned off. “Cracking the window doesn’t help” (Safe Kids Worldwide, 2020).

On average, 38 children die of heatstroke in hot vehicles each year in the U.S., about one death every 10 days. Since 1998, 873 children have died in a hot vehicle (NoHeatStroke.org, 2020). There were 53 child heatstroke deaths in vehicles in 2018 and 52 deaths in 2019. The number of deaths fell to 24 in 2020, probably as a result of reduced travel due to the coronavirus pandemic (Ibid.).

Every child death in a hot vehicle is preventable.

Pediatricians and other primary care providers are in a key position to provide vital education that can prevent such deaths. Educating parents about the extreme dangers of leaving a child in a vehicle and helping them develop safety routines can prevent a child from being left behind or becoming trapped.

The death of a child in a hot vehicle is considered an unthinkable tragedy, but it continues to happen. “Keep in mind: Any parent or caregiver, even a very loving and attentive one, can forget a child is in the back seat. Being especially busy or distracted or having a change from the usual routine increases the risk” (AAP, 2020).

Each Texas Health Steps medical checkup and acute care appointment is an opportunity to provide education and guidance that can save a young child from death in a hot vehicle. (Safety guidance is covered later in this course.)