When summer arrives, the sun can beat down and fill your area with an incredibly high temperature. Desert cities can often bake in 110 degree heat, and people will head to the pools or stay inside where it is air-conditioned to avoid the stifling heat. Because of the windows and typically dark interior, your car can soak up that heat at an incredible rate and the interior can spike to a dangerously high temperature. If you aren't careful when driving in the summer, a few foolish decisions could cause a passenger, or yourself, to get heatstroke.

If your car has leather seats, then be increasingly careful when climbing in on a hot day. The heat outside may have cooked your leather seats until they are hot enough to burn your legs as you sit. Also, metal pieces like the seat belt may be searing because of the heat outside. The best way to avoid these problems is by parking in the shade when possible, and turning on the air conditioning to cool off the car before you climb in. Remember that the air conditioning may not work unless the car is moving, so you may need to put a towel or sweatshirt on the seat to protect your own legs and drive the car for a while before allowing your passengers to enter the vehicle.

Another warning: never leave your children in the car unattended on a hot summer day. You may assume that it's fine to leave your children in the vehicle while you run into the grocery store to grab a few items, but this could be a dangerous, even fatal mistake. Just rolling down the windows won't protect your children from heatstroke, because the car will heat up quickly even if there is an outside air flow. The National Highway Traffic Safety Association says that even when it is 80 degrees outside, the inside of a car can heat up to deadly levels. Children overheat easily and infants and toddlers can easily obtain heatstroke because of their weakness and smallness. Young children's bodies absorb more heat than an adult's. They also don't sweat as excessively as adults do, which is our natural mechanism to expel heat.

When someone has heatstroke, you need to call 9-1-1 immediately. You may be able to help cool the person off by putting rags with cold water on their forehead or wrists. However, you may want to rush that person to the doctor. Remember that children are at more of a danger to heatstroke than adults. Their body temperatures can increase 5 times as fast. Sometimes a child can get heatstroke without even being left in the car alone. Cars without air-conditioning or with a dysfunctioning system are a serious danger to both passengers and drivers when it is very hot outside. If you don't drink enough water then you may begin to overheat. This can bring on a throbbing headache, dizziness, nausea, and other actions that may disorient you while behind the wheel. All it takes is a few minutes before you could become a threat on the road similar to a drunk driver.

Make sure to keep the air conditioning on while driving in hot weather, and never sit in a parked car with the air off. Make sure that you never leave your young children in a parked car, even for just a moment or two. Leaving the air-conditioning on while you run in to a supermarket won't make the situation safer, because most engines will stop pumping out cold air when the car is idle. Make sure to take precautions to drive safe and keep yourself refreshed so that the heat doesn't cause potential for an accident.