http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/07/29/deaths_of_children_in_hot_cars_rising/
Since the mid-1990s, the number of children who died of heat exhaustion inside vehicles has risen dramatically, totaling around 340 in the past 10 years. Ironically, one reason is a change parent-drivers made to protect children after juvenile air-bag deaths peaked in 1995: They put them in the back seat, where they are more easily forgotten.
The correlation between the rise in these deaths and the 1990s move to put children in the back seat is striking.
“Up to that time, the average number of children dying of hyperthermia in the United States was about 11 a year,” says Jan Null, an adjunct professor of meteorology at San Francisco State University who has studied this trend. “Then we put them in the back, turned the car seats around. And from ‘98 to 2006, that number is 36 a year.”
Thanks for the stats. Of course the real issue is whether lives are saved with having them in the back seat compared to being forgotten but there is a good idea of having the baby bag in the front seat so no one forgets the kids is way back yonder. Personally I think it is best to designate one parent to be primary caretaker, usually the mother. I love men to death but they are not multi-track naturally. When couples kind of wing it, I can see how one can perhaps forget whose day it was to drop off the kid. My kids are grown now, safely. The van we had for awhile was a VW, which tends to be more open and visible throughout. Nowadays vans are caverns of darkness and cushions and headrests.
I think more cars now give you the option of deactivating the passenger side airbag for this reason