The news stories tear through the heart:

A 7-month-old baby in Houston, Texas, dies after his father forgets and leaves him in the car while the father goes to work.

A 4-month-old Evansville, Indiana, child is left in a car for two hours while the mother is shopping.

A 5-year-old Arkansas boy dies after being forgotten in a day care van in West Memphis.

These are not tragedies compiled over the years. All are among cases that have happened within the past three weeks.

They don’t take into account the dozens of children who are rescued and escape death.

This year, about 40 children will die in the United States through forgetfulness, carelessness or downright stupidity.

Sorry to be so blunt. But with the attention that has been given to the dangers of leaving kids alone in hot cars, the excuses of parents saying they were only going to be gone for a minute or thought it would be fine because they left the windows cracked fail to get our sympathy.

Unfortunately, that’s just what happens almost half of the time. In about 40 percent of the cases, parents intentionally leave children waiting in the car to run a quick errand.

About 55 percent of the time, children tragically are forgotten. It happens with more frequency than can be imagined, mostly because summer brings a lot of changes to people’s routines.

In rare cases, children get inside unlocked vehicles and are unable to get out.

Hyperthermia, or heat stroke, is a greater risk to young children because their bodies have not fully developed the mechanisms to cool down. As a result, heat affects children from three to five times faster than adults.

Central Illinois has been spoiled the past few days by cooler, breezy weather. Even though the thermometer is not expected to be back in the 90s until after the Fourth of July, temperatures can be deceptive.

Even when it is a relatively mild 70 degrees outside, the temperature inside a vehicle sitting in the sun can reach 99 degrees within 10 minutes. In just a few minutes more, it can get as hot as 120 degrees — and can kill quickly.

Illinois is one of 19 states in the nation that have laws against leaving a child unattended for more than 10 minutes. The law defines unattended as not being accompanied by someone at least 14 years old and makes a first offense a misdemeanor. Second and subsequent incidents not resulting in injury or death can become felonies.

The safest rule is to break the habit, and to always look before you lock up.