Committee takes critical look at child-in-car bill

Kirsten Searer

Friday, May 6, 2005 | 10:59 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- An Assembly committee picked at a bill this morning that would make it a misdemeanor for adults to leave children unattended in cars.

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Valerie Wiener, D-Las Vegas, said she thinks the bill can be amended so that legislators are more comfortable with it.

The legislation is needed to try to save lives, Wiener said, noting that since 1996 16 children have died as a result of being left in cars in Las Vegas.

Senate Bill 287 would make it illegal to leave children younger than 7 years old in a car unless the child is accompanied by someone at least 12 years old.

The misdemeanor penalty would apply even if the adult simply forgot the child was in the vehicle, Wiener said.

Citing a loophole in current laws, Clark County District Attorney David Roger has refused to prosecute parents who said they did not intentionally leave their children in vehicles, even in cases in which the child died.

Under Wiener's bill, anyone found guilty of the misdemeanor could be punished by up to six months in prison and a fine of up to $1,000, but a judge could waive the penalties if the person charged completes a parenting improvement classes.

Wiener and the bill's other sponsor, Assemblyman William Horne, D-Las Vegas, said they hope the bill will make people think more about child safety. Wiener said she also believes the measure is necessary because the only charge police can levy now is child endangerment, which is a felony. That means most minor instances happen without any penalty, she said.

It's not just extreme temperatures that pose a danger to children left in cars. They can also be carjacked, injure themselves on power windows or even find a way to disengage the brakes and move the car.

Members of the Assembly Judiciary Committee suggested amending the bill so that parents could not be ticketed if they accidentally lock their children in the car but stay with them while they wait for help.

They also want to amend the bill so that parents may be "in or around" the car. Parents pumping gas, for example, still have children in the line of sight, several committee members said.

But members differed on how far a parent or adult could stray. Assemblyman Brooks Holcomb, R-Reno, said his wife is a very responsible grandmother who always puts her two grandsons in child seats, but what if she needs to run into a gas station to pay for gas he asked. Should she have to unstrap the children and take them with her?

Wiener said she doesn't want parents to use the excuse that their children were simply in the line of sight. Parents could park in front of a convenience store and start playing slot machines, she said.

Clearly, they would not be supervising children in that case, though the children might be in their line of sight.

And some gas stations in Assemblywoman Susan Gerhardt, D-Henderson, said her ex-husband left her then-5-year-old son unattended in a car. The boy managed to roll the car down a hill. So, she said, she's supportive of the measure.

"You need to have visual contact with those kids," she said. "If you're going into the 7-Eleven, you can't see them anymore."

The committee will talk more about their concerns in a work session next week.