Why Are Kids Still Dying in Hot Cars—and Can Tech Help?

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• Since 1991, at least 158 kids have died in Texas hot cars. Nationwide, the death toll since 1990 is 1,100 or more.

• A proposed rulemaking that would mandate available and affordable anti-hot car death technology in new cars has been stalled for years.

• Radar-based systems that can detect tiny movements of children’s chests as they breathe—like has been found in the Genesis GV70 for a few years now—are beginning to make their way into more cars.

On August 21, from 8:30 am to 4 pm, a nine-month-old girl was left alone in a car in Beeville, Texas, by her grandmother. When found, she was unresponsive, and the death is being investigated by local police as a possible criminal homicide, KALB reported.

By noon that day, the outside temperature surpassed 90 degrees Fahrenheit in Beeville, and inside the car it was likely as much as 40 degrees higher.

This was hardly an isolated incident. In fact, reports the advocacy group Kids and Car Safety, it was “the second hot car death to occur in Texas in the last 24 hours”—and the third for the year. Since 1991, at least 158 kids have died in Texas hot cars. Nationwide, the death toll since 1990 is 1,100 or more.

And the problem has gotten worse since kids have been relocated to the back seat to avoid airbag problems. Most of the victims are three years old or younger.

Laura Beck of Midlothian, Virginia, lost her entire family in 2022 when her husband, Aaron, left their 18-month-old son Anderson in a hot car, then committed suicide after learning the child had died. “I relive this gut-wrenching nightmare every single day,” she said at a rally this year calling attention to the growing crisis.

A 2021 study in Pediatric Emergency Care looked at 541 cases of children dying in hot cars between 2000 and 2016, documenting examples in 45 states.

The authors found that heat-related deaths occur most often in Texas, Florida, and California, and were on the rise, and that criminal charges were pursued in 58.2% of the cases. The responsible party knowingly left the victim in 16.6% of cases, and unknowingly in 78.2%.

Meanwhile, a proposed rulemaking that would mandate available and affordable anti-hot car death technology in new cars has been languishing at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

The agency was supposed to have taken the preliminary step of issuing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking by December of 2022, but it has been repeatedly delayed, most recently to April of 2025. The final rule was originally due November 15, 2023, two years after the bill was signed into law.

A NHTSA spokesperson told Autoweek, “To prevent these heartbreaking tragedies, NHTSA has initiated rulemaking that would require vehicles to have a system to alert a driver to check the back seat at the end of a trip and is evaluating a full range of options that could more effectively address the issue of hot car deaths.

“In fact, as part of this complex rulemaking, NHTSA is analyzing more sophisticated technologies to detect and alert parents if a child is in the back seat, as well as actively assessing the effectiveness of the one rear-seat occupant detection system the agency has been able to acquire. The agency will continue to test other systems as they are made available to the general public.”

NHTSA added that “detection technologies are mostly still in the research-and-development phase. The Vehicle Safety Act requires that each new safety standard be supported by robust data and research showing that it is practicable, objective, and meets a need for safety.”

In response to a query on the hot cars law from Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), the federal agency said last year, “NHTSA is proceeding as expeditiously as possible to comply with the mandates and requirements of [the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law]… While gathering data can be time consuming, reliance on sound data is the cornerstone of our rulemaking process as we strive to maximize safety with every rulemaking action.”

The industry itself did take some action, including a necessary public education campaign. According to the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, representing carmakers, a voluntary commitment made in 2019 means that today more than 215 new vehicle models have rear-seat reminder technology, a 30% increase over two years ago.

The reminders were optional on some cars, but the participating companies said they’d make it standard for model year 2025.

These systems vary, but they typically include some kind of visual and audible alert to check the back seat at the end of the trip after the engine is shut off. More sophisticated is occupant sensing, which can actually detect motion in the back seat.

Genesis was the first automaker to adapt a radar-based system, in 2022 on the GV70. Genesis said the system can detect tiny movements of children’s chests as they breathe, and when the engine is shut off and the door opened, it sends a warning to the dashboard with an audible alert.

If that’s ignored and the driver walks away after locking the doors, a second more urgent alert is sent via lights, the car’s horn, and a text message. “The system is quite refined,” said Genesis spokesman Jarred Pellat.

Volvo announced in 2022 that it was working on a standard radar-based system to detect “the tiniest movements at sub-millimeter scale” for the EX90, and “other forthcoming Volvo car models.” Thomas Schultz, a US Volvo spokesman, told Autoweek, “We will have as standard occupant-sensing radars on the EX90. We are taking orders for the car now and deliveries will begin very soon.”

Toyota is also testing what it calls the Cabin Awareness concept, which can detect heartbeats, motion, and respiration across all three seating areas, as well as the cargo area and footwells. A spokesman for the company declined to provide further details.

Are the simple non-sensor backseat reminders good enough? No, says Amber Rollins, director of Kids and Car Safety, which is spearheading the campaign to stop hot car deaths.

“It’s not good—it’s more bottom of the barrel,” she said. “Seven babies have died in cars with that reminder. When you turn your car off, you’re not looking at the dashboard, and if you hear some beep, you don’t know what it means. The systems also produce a lot of false alarms. But better technology exists—it’s not something we have to develop.”

Rollins described the voluntary agreement as “an attempt to avoid regulation and show that the industry did something.”

The science of what happens inside a hot car is well known. Jan Null, a meteorologist at San José State University, told Autoweek he began looking into the issue in 2001 after a child died in a hot car in San José.

“Journalists wanted to know how hot it could get inside a car parked in the sun with the windows rolled up,” Null said. “Our study was subsequently published in a scientific journal. It said that on an 85-degree day it could reach 130 degrees Fahrenheit inside the car. The amount of heat rise is consistent, up 19 degrees in 10 minutes, then another 10 in the next 10 minutes. In an hour, the temperature will have risen 43 degrees, but then it plateaus.”

Null said that cracking the windows “only reduces the temperature rise by two or three degrees.” And he said the color of the car is not a hugely significant factor. “It’s the objects inside the car that heat up through the glass,” he said. “The dashboard can reach 200 degrees Fahrenheit.”

Null said a significant number of people who leave kids in their cars are going into bars and casinos, where there are distractions aplenty. He also said only 38% of the people buying new cars are 45 years old or under, meaning that the technology will take a while to reach many car buyers that are of the age to have young children.

Some of the campaigns around this issue have focused on people leaving pets in hot cars, and Rollins said it had worked with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). That group tells people who find a canine in dire straits,

“If the authorities are unresponsive or too slow and the dog’s life appears to be in imminent danger, find a witness (or several) who will back up your assessment, take steps to remove the suffering animal from the car, and then wait for authorities to arrive.”

If you do break a window, you may not be on solid legal ground. There are 25 states that have “Good Samaritan” laws that would be protective if an animal (or a person) is left in a car under extreme duress.

“The laws generally allow you to use any reasonable means necessary to rescue the animal—which could mean breaking a window—without having to pay for damages or face criminal charges,” says Findlaw.com.

Which states? Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Other states have legislation pending.

Kids, often while playing, can lock themselves in car trunks. NHTSA required accessible glow-in-the-dark in-trunk releases on 2002 and later cars. Janette Fennell of San Francisco, the founder of Kids and Car Safety, lobbied hard for this law, after she and her husband were locked in the trunk of their Lexus by carjackers in 1995.

Although kids continue to die in older cars, the advocacy group says, “Since the introduction of the device, no children have died in cars so equipped.”

Because people will continue to either forget they have children on board, or just think “they’ll be fine” for a quick pit stop, kids will continue to die on hot days. And to combat these awful outcomes, it’s obvious that a vigorous public education campaign needs to be coordinated with cutting-edge technology.

Do you think new cars should have mandatory technology to actively alert a driver if a child or pet has been left locked inside? Please comment below.