Heatstroke has killed more than 1,000 children left or trapped in hot cars

More than 1,000 children in the United States have died of heatstroke after being left or becoming trapped inside a hot car over the past 25 years, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Thirty-one children died that way in 2025, and the annual toll has twice hit a record 53 deaths in a single year, in 2018 and 2019.

Most of the cases did not involve deliberate neglect. They began with a caregiver who was certain, wrongly, that the child was somewhere else, and the routine that broke down that day is the detail investigators come back to again and again.

A Death Toll That Has Not Leveled Off

The pattern runs longer than NHTSA’s own 25-year window. Kids and Car Safety, a nonprofit that has tracked vehicular heatstroke fatalities since 1990, counts at least 1,197 children killed nationwide over that longer span, with roughly 7,500 more surviving injuries of varying severity. A separate, independently maintained database run by Jan Null, a certified consulting meteorologist at San Jose State University, puts the total at 1,069 pediatric heatstroke deaths for the 28 years from 1998 through 2025 — a lower figure than the Kids and Car Safety count largely because it starts eight years later and draws primarily on media-reported cases rather than the broader mix of law enforcement and medical records the nonprofit also uses.

None of the three counts disputes the other’s basic shape. Twenty-four deaths had been logged for 2026 as of mid-September, spread across 17 states, with Florida, Tennessee and Utah each recording three. The victims ranged from 2 months to 7 years old, and most were toddlers.

How a Forgotten Child Becomes a Fatal Case

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s own numbers point to a single dominant cause: over 50% of pediatric vehicular heatstroke deaths happen because a parent or caregiver forgot a child was in the car at all, not because anyone left a child behind on purpose. The National Safety Council, which relies on Null’s tracking for its published figures, puts the average at 37 deaths a year and describes the same mechanism in blunter terms, noting that “in more than half of these fatalities, the child was forgotten in the vehicle by a parent or caregiver.” A change in routine — a different parent doing the school run, a detour on the way to daycare — is the detail that shows up again and again in individual case reports.

The physics work against the child from the first few minutes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that “temperatures inside the car can rise almost 20 degrees Fahrenheit within the first 10 minutes, even with a window cracked open,” and NHTSA notes separately that a child’s core body temperature climbs three to five times faster than an adult’s. Heatstroke sets in around 104 degrees Fahrenheit; death can follow once a child’s core temperature reaches 107 degrees or higher, a threshold that can be crossed in well under an hour on a warm day.

Children Who Get In On Their Own

Forgetting is not the only pathway. NHTSA has recorded more than 230 children who died since 1998 after gaining access to a vehicle on their own and becoming trapped, usually in an unlocked car parked in a driveway or garage rather than left running with a caregiver nearby. A much smaller share of cases, still counted in the hundreds nationally since 1998, involve a caregiver who knowingly left a child in a vehicle, often for what was meant to be a brief errand.

The mix of causes is why prevention campaigns aim at habits rather than at any single group of parents assumed to be careless. Kids and Car Safety’s 2026 data show victims splitting almost evenly between the two main pathways — most were left unknowingly, a smaller number gained access themselves — with only a handful of cases still listed as circumstances unknown.

The Habits Safety Groups Say Actually Work

NHTSA’s prevention guidance boils down to a short routine it calls “Stop. Look. Lock.” — checking the entire vehicle, including the back seat, every time before locking the doors and walking away. The agency also recommends keeping a purse, phone or briefcase in the back seat as a forcing function, storing car keys and key fobs out of a child’s reach, and asking childcare providers to call within minutes if a child does not arrive as scheduled.

Locking parked vehicles matters even when no trip is planned, since more than 230 of the deaths NHTSA tracks involved children who let themselves into a car that was sitting still. Shade and cracked windows do not meaningfully slow the temperature rise inside a closed cabin, which is why every agency cited here treats “never leave a child alone in or near a vehicle, even for a minute” as the one rule with no exceptions.

Null’s tracking shows the first heatstroke death of a given year typically arrives in March, months before most of the country associates a parked car with any real danger — and long before the summer months when the annual toll usually starts climbing again.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.