Columnist Susan Snyder: Forgetting is different than neglect

Friday, June 20, 2003 | 6:04 a.m.

Three children were left alone in cars in past weeks.

One child died, and his father wasn't charged with a crime. The other two children did not suffer serious injury, and their parents face prosecution.

It was one of the most fiercely debated topics across the valley last week, as people bickered over cubicles, coffee machines and the radio waves.

It doesn't make sense, they said.

But the Clark County prosecutor's decision made perfect sense because the law says it isn't neglect if you aren't aware your child is in danger. Intentionally leaving a child alone in a vehicle falls into the category of what the law considers a dangerous situation of which adults should be aware.

We had a chance to clarify the issue this year. Sen. Dina Titus, D-Las Vegas, was among the sponsors of a bill that would have made it a misdemeanor to leave a child younger than 7 years alone in a vehicle that was running, had keys in the passenger compartment or was in dangerous conditions (hot).

The measure died in committee. But even if passed it might not have changed what happened in a prosecutor's office last week.

"People are going to be people. I don't know that you can make a law out of being forgetful," Nevada Sen. Terry Care, D-Las Vegas, said outside a legislative roundup hosted by the Safe Community Partnership Wednesday.

Care supported the bill's intent.

"You can make a law about conduct. And if that conduct is a result of being forgetful and we can attach some sort of penalty to that, maybe people wouldn't be as forgetful," he said.

But, he added, he feels deep sympathy for the Las Vegas father whose routine was out of sync the day he went to work and accidentally left his infant son strapped in the family's hot vehicle.

And we can't honestly hope any legislation will alter what we seem unwilling or unable to change.

One of my co-workers, a father of two, said he understood how a father trying to keep it together in a frantic morning routine could forget his baby was in a car seat.

"You've got a mortgage, car payments. You're working," he said. "I can totally understand how it can happen."

We all can. We call the radio station and point the finger when it happens while quietly thanking God it wasn't us.

It's amazing it doesn't happen more often. Our standard of living is substandard.

More than half of us are overweight because we don't have time to exercise or eat right. We drive while conducting business on the cell phone and crash because we're not driving the car. We drive too fast, sleep too little, max out our credit cards, work on vacations.

We're over-committed, over-extended.

Forgetful.

For what? Gated neighborhoods. Two cars in the drive. The right clothes. The right soccer league. We'll pay whatever it costs to feel happy and safe.

But no SUV is safe if the payments mean working to exhaustion and forgetting the baby in the back seat. Being too busy is dangerous if we can't stop long enough to take him with us.

It makes no sense. And no law can change that for us.