Sometimes my cart gets accidentally out of bounds (because I parked too close to the grocer store's property line) and the wheels lock up. Then I try to drag it somewhere out of the way at least.
When my kid was a baby, I used to worry that someone might think I'm abandoning him or leaving him in a car unattended when walking the cart back (no one else with me), but it never became a concern unless the weather was too hot. I never did figure out how "leaving kids unattended" laws worked out with returning a shopping cart where the nearest corral was half way across the parking lot.
It’s the wolf/goat/cabbage problem.
Take the cart with child to the car.
Unload the groceries, return the cart and child to the corral.
Remove child and return to the car.
If this is not possible the child is large enough to survive half a minute unsupervised or you have to park next to a corral anyway (since you couldn’t bring the child to the store to get a cart).
Ya, no, thats not very feasible. The child is perfectly capable of surviving for the 30 seconds to one minute needed. The question was about law, not pragmatics, anyways, since those are the times we live in.
> I never did figure out how "leaving kids unattended" laws worked out
That is also exclusively an US problem, and sounds quite insane to my european mind.