Every 10 days, across the United States, a child dies while unattended in a hot car. It only takes a few minutes for a car to heat up and become deadly to a child inside. As summer temperatures rise, more kids are at risk – the death toll this summer has already exceeded 20.

As parents, we often have conflicted feelings about safety: On the one hand, we can sometimes be too cautious, overestimating our child’s level of risk of a particular danger. And at the same time, we can completely dismiss certain hazards, assuming our child would never be affected. This is especially true of one particular kind of accident. 

The calendar tells us that summer starts on June 21. But for me, summer starts on Memorial Day weekend, when I join aunts, uncles and cousins at the beach to open our old family cottage for the season.