A Texas mother believed she’d gone through her normal routine on Wednesday: deliver her 5-year-old son to school, as always, before heading to work next door. At the end of the school day, she went to pick him up — only for the school to inform her he’d never arrived.
In a nightmare twist, he had died after spending hours in the back of her car as the temperature rose, still strapped into his seat. She had completely forgotten to drop him off.
San Antonio Police Chief William McManus called it an “extremely tragic situation.”
Since 1990, more than 1,100 children have lost their lives this way. Summer is peak season — so much so that two more children died while reporting this story. Since May, 15 children have died after being left in hot cars, according to the nonprofit Kids and Car Safety.
The majority of hot car deaths — 52 percent — result from someone simply forgetting their child in the vehicle, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Often caregivers believe they’d dropped them off already or fail to remember the kid was with them that day.
The tragedy may even be becoming more common. In 2009, about 15 to 25 hot car deaths happened each year, the Washington Post reported at the time. Last year it happened 37 times.
“I think the real problem that we have here is this misconception that ‘this would never happen to me,’” Amber Rollins-Reis, director of Kids and Car Safety, an organization focused on preventing vehicle dangers, told The Independent.
Keys, wallet or phone are easily forgotten, but forgetting children seems unimaginable.
These memory lapses could be explained by a “clash between memory systems,” Dr. David Diamond, a neuroscientist and professor at the University of South Florida, told The Independent. There’s the habit memory system, which allows us to do routine things automatically, like driving to work. Then there’s the conscious memory system, which allows us to plan ahead.
These systems compete if a routine is disrupted. For example, if a parent, who normally drives straight to work, one day has to take their child to daycare before work, the systems start competing with one another, Diamond said. That’s when a child could be forgotten as the habit memory system often takes over.
Sometimes small cues, like a cry from the backseat or seeing a diaper, can be the difference between life and death. “I think that every parent on planet Earth has experienced that type of memory failure involving their child in a rear-facing car seat in the back seat of their car. But the difference is that something triggered them to remember they were back there and nothing happened,” Rollins-Reis said.
If a baby is asleep in a car seat, the parent’s memory may not be triggered, and they just go about their day. Perhaps that’s why 88 percent of children who have died in a hot car are age three and younger, according to the nonprofit. Parents of young children are often stressed and sleep deprived, conditions that make “it more likely you’ll do something out of habit,” Diamond said.
There’s another issue at play here, too: If someone thinks a situation is unlikely, they aren’t going to take measures to prevent it.
Caregivers can take steps to prevent potential tragedies. Experts recommended putting an object, like a stuffed animal, in the backseat of the car and putting it on their lap after buckling in the child — the stuffie serving as a visual reminder that a child is in the car.
There are other problems beyond memory failure.
Child hot car deaths skyrocketed in the 1990s, after the government and safety advocates launched a campaign to encourage children to ride in the backseat of cars due to reports of airbag-related deaths. This new trend paired with rear-facing car seats — making it hard to tell that a child is in the back — led to an uptick in hot car deaths, Rollins-Reis said.
A 2021 federal law included a mandate that the Secretary of Transportation issue a rule within two years requiring new passenger vehicles be equipped with an alert system to check the backseat after the car is off. That deadline passed in November 2023.
Even without the law in place, several car manufacturers have included features that remind drivers to check the backseat. If they can afford it, caretakers can also buy technology to protect against potential tragedies, like car seats or sensor pads that alerts parents if a child is left in the car.
Despite the scientific research, parents are often unfairly maligned when reports of these tragedies surface. About 25 percent of hot car deaths occur after children get into a car on their own while only 15 percent of children are knowingly left in a car, the nonprofit found.
These instances are rare, but they happen — and get headlines.
California mom Maya Hernandez, 20, called a medical spa last week to see if her two sons, aged one and two, were allowed inside as she underwent a lip filler procedure. An employee said they could sit in the waiting room for the 20-minute appointment, but Hernandez instead left her boys inside her car for two and a half hours, authorities say. She’d left the air conditioning running, but the car’s system automaticaly shut it off after an hour. The one-year-old died while the older brother survived and was placed in child protective custody.
She’s now facing charges of involuntary manslaughter and child cruelty.
Hernandez “admitted that she knew it was irresponsible to leave her kids in the car” and “thought about it when she got out of the car but had no justification as to why she left them anyway,” her criminal complaint states.
Social media users swiftly condemned her. “Well we definitely see where her priorities were,” one user wrote. Another remarked: “How can a loving mother do that?” Yet another said: “She could afford lip filler but not a babysitter. Wtaf??”
Others have also been charged with manslaughter or other crimes. State of mind matters when it comes to bringing criminal charges; particularly since research shows most of the time, parents didn’t leave their child behind knowingly.
“This is happening to the most loving, responsible parents, the infinitely organized and safety minded people. I think it continues to happen because it’s not something that’s on people’s radar as a concern,” Rollins-Reis said.
In the cases of unintentional deaths, Diamond believes charges aren’t needed ebcause the driver “will be in their own personal prison for the rest of their life because they know that their inaction led to the death of their child.”
He added: “This is not a matter of negligence, it’s not a matter of lack of love. This is simply being human, and being human means catastrophic memory failures occur.”
