Hot-car deaths bring call to action

A near-record number of children dying in hot cars this summer pushed lawmakers to try to require automakers to install technology that would alert drivers if a child was left in the back seat.

Eleven children died in hot cars last month, the deadliest July for such incidents in nearly a decade. The latest victims include 7-month-old Zane Endress and 1year-old Josiah Riggins, two Arizona children who died within a day of each other last week.

Thirty-seven children die while trapped in hot vehicles each year on average.

This year’s death toll is already 29.

July is typically the deadliest month for children in overheated cars, said meteorologist Jan Null of Golden Gate Weather Services, who has tracked hot-car deaths for the past 20 years.

The last time the monthly toll from hot car deaths reached 11 was in 2008, he said. A recordhigh 16 children died in hot cars in 1999.

At least 729 children have died since 1998 from heatstroke in vehicles in the USA. The annual total rose dramatically in the 1990s after juvenile deaths from cars’ front-seat air bags peaked.

New legislation required children to sit in back seats, where they are more easily forgotten.

Sens. Richard Blumenthal, DConn., and Al Franken, D-Minn., introduced legislation July 3 that would require that new cars come equipped with technology to alert drivers if a child was left in the back seat once the ignition was switched off. Blumenthal said such technology is available in many of General Motors’ newest models.