With temperatures rising, it is important to remember the national weather service’s slogan, ‘Beat the Heat, Check the Backseat.’ With the summer heat right around the corner and a high of 95 degrees next week, the threat of heatstroke and heat related fatalities is imminent. According to the National Safety Council, an average of 38 children under the age of 15 years old die each year from heatstroke after being left in a vehicle. There is an even higher number of animals whose lives have been lost to this exact thing. According to PETA there were 54 animals who died of heat related deaths and another 469 that were rescued from these situations, which are just the ones that were reported. In 2023, there have already been 16 animal deaths and 63 saves.

Since 1998, there has been an estimate of 29 children that have died from heatstroke in vehicles in Oklahoma. That would mean that on average more than one child a year dies of heatstroke in vehicles, just in Oklahoma. According to the National Safety Council, in 2022 alone there were 33 hot car deaths. Jan Null, CCM, at the Department of Meteorology and Climate Science at San Jose State University has a constantly updated website, noheatstroke.org, with the running count of pediatric vehicular heatstroke deaths in the United States. So far, in 2023 alone, there have been 8 child deaths already because of vehicular heatstrokes.

There is a long list of reasons why people leave their children and pets in hot cars, but the most common is that they were only going to be a minute. The problem with this is that in only 10 minutes, a vehicle can heat up by 20 degrees and within an hour rise by over 40 degrees in Fahrenheit. Anyone living in Oklahoma, has experienced getting into a hot car in the summer time. It is suffocating to be in for just a few minutes without an air conditioner or a window open. Now imagine being in it for 15 minutes, longer. That is what these children and animals are experiencing.

Children and pets can suffer from a deadly heatstroke in just 10 minutes if their bodies are unable to cool down. There have been many people and organizations that have come up with systems to remember to check your car. These systems range anywhere from placing a sticky note on your steering wheel to placing a stuffed animal in their carseat and moving it into eyesight when the child is in the car.

These events are happening all across the U.S., and while it doesn’t need to be 90 degrees for this to happen, summer time is when this occurs the most often. Children are out of school, schedules are changed, and previous routines are broken, all of which raise the danger of children being left in cars to unprecedented heights.

It is a good rule of thumb to always check the backseat before exiting your car, never leave a child or a pet unattended, and make sure the vehicle is locked so that children cannot enter without your knowledge. It is pertinent to understand just how quickly a tragedy like this can occur and innocent lives can be lost because of a terrible mistake.