STAND. COM. REP. NO. 2735

Honolulu, Hawaii

RE:    S.B. No. 2245

       S.D. 1

Honorable Colleen Hanabusa

President of the Senate

Twenty-Fourth State Legislature

Regular Session of 2008

State of Hawaii

Madam:

     Your Committee on Judiciary and Labor, to which was referred S.B. No. 2245 entitled:

"A BILL FOR AN ACT RELATING TO UNATTENDED CHILDREN IN MOTOR VEHICLES,"

begs leave to report as follows:

     The purpose of this measure is to protect young children left unattended in motor vehicles by providing law enforcement with a preventive tool similar to the seat belt use and child safety seat laws.

     Specifically, this measure prohibits operators and adult passengers of motor vehicles from leaving the vehicle with an unattended child under the age of nine inside for five minutes or more and makes such conduct a violation of the statewide traffic code, not a crime, for which a violator may only be fined.  The measure grants law enforcement officers, firefighters, and rescue team personnel immunity from liability in any civil action for removing the child from the motor vehicle in good faith.

The measure also requires the examiner of drivers to specifically test an applicant for a driver's license for knowledge of the requirement.  Finally, the measure requires lessors of rental motor vehicles to display at all times in a conspicuous place in each rental motor vehicle the prohibition against leaving a child unattended in a motor vehicle.

     Your Committee received testimony in support of this measure from the Department of the Attorney General.  The Department of the Prosecuting Attorney of the City and County of Honolulu and State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company submitted late testimony in support of this measure.

     Upon further consideration, your Committee has amended this measure to make technical nonsubstantive amendments including clarifying that the amendments made to section 286‑108, Hawaii Revised Statutes, shall not be repealed when that section is repealed and reenacted on January 9, 2011, by Act 72, Session Laws of Hawaii 2005.

     As affirmed by the record of votes of the members of your Committee on Judiciary and Labor that is attached to this report, your Committee is in accord with the intent and purpose of S.B. No. 2245, as amended herein, and recommends that it pass Third Reading in the form attached hereto as S.B. No. 2245, S.D. 1.

Respectfully submitted on behalf of the members of the Committee on Judiciary and Labor,

____________________________

BRIAN T. TANIGUCHI, Chair