Friday, April 22, 2005 | 9:56 a.m.
CARSON CITY -- A Senate committee passed a bill Thursday that could send inattentive motorists to jail if they kill someone on the road.
The Senate Judiciary Committee passed the bill unanimously after hearing from a stream of tearful people who said their family members were killed by drivers who received no punishment other than a simple traffic ticket.
"It's not looking for revenge, but people's lives are worth a lot more than a traffic fine," said Jan Granger, whose son, Tony Shortman, was killed last year in Las Vegas.
Assembly Bill 295 would allow prosecutors to charge drivers with vehicular manslaughter if the driver was demonstrating "simple negligence" when he or she killed someone on the road.
That could mean the driver was speeding, running a red light, making an illegal turn, failing to remain in a lane, or even paying attention to something else, according to testimony on the bill.
The charge could yield a one-year license suspension, a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail.
The incident also would go on the driver's record, meaning he or she would face higher insurance.
Other attempts to crack down on inattentive drivers have died in previous legislative sessions, but Assembly Bill 295 has met little resistance in the Legislature and now goes to a full vote of the Senate.
Recent high-profile deaths, including a Las Vegas accident in which a woman hit a bus stop and killed four people, have changed the debate in the Legislature, said Ben Graham, a lobbyist for the Nevada District Attorneys Association.
The bill passed almost unanimously in the Assembly last week, with Assemblywoman Chris Giunchigliani, D-Las Vegas, the lone dissenter.
"An accident is an accident is an accident," Giunchigliani said.
But Graham said the driver would have to show some fault. For example, a driver wouldn't be charged if a child darted into the road or if he hit a pedestrian while driving legally on a dark road, he said.
"There has to be negligence," he said.
But Graham pointed to the bus stop accident as a potential case in which vehicular manslaughter could be used. A driver who steers onto a curb and into a bus stop is being inattentive, he said.
"The bus stop didn't move," he said.
Granger's son, Shortman, was driving 15 miles per hour under the speed limit on his way to Red Rock Canyon last year when a man took an illegal left turn in front of him, killing him, Granger said.
The 35-year-old commercial real estate developer left behind a wife and two small children. The driver received a $90 fine, and Granger complained she wasn't even notified of his day in court.
"We couldn't go there and look him in the eyes just so he could see there was a family that his carelessness fouled up," Granger said.
That sense of frustration was obvious in the legislative hearings held on the bill, including the one Thursday morning.
"I just want some kind of acknowledgement that Eric was valuable and that he mattered," said Krestine Daphne, whose son, Eric, was killed in 2001, when a man made an illegal U-turn in front of him in Reno.
A woman who killed 9-year-old Alexis Kiles in Sun Valley received a simple traffic ticket and still drives around the town in the same car, said Alexis' cousin, Ivory Endacott. The driver hit the girl while she was walking home.
Alexis' grandmother, Sharon, said she drives by her granddaughter's grave every day.
"All I can think of is her precious little body laying in a casket in the cold ground," Sharon Kiles said. "By passing this law, I feel my granddaughter's death will not have to be in vain."
Endacott, who has spoken publicly several times in favor of harsher penalties for inattentive drivers, said she hopes the bill will be a legacy for people who have died on the road.
"Today I feel a lot better," Endacott said Thursday. "Everything that we're doing is finally getting something done."
Sharon Kiles said she hopes it will save lives.
"I think people will start thinking twice when they get in their car to drive," she said.
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