If tougher criminal penalties haven’t scared drunks who drive their kids around—and apparently they haven’t—maybe they would fear one charge that could have even greater consequences: child endangerment.

We don’t normally think of the cocktail crowd as unfit parents. We save such opprobrium for the woman who drugged her young daughter with allergy medication a couple of weeks ago so that she could go out drinking and doing cocaine.

Or we castigate the mother charged with child endangerment a couple of years ago for leaving her three young kids in filthy conditions with only a 12- year-old to look after them.

But what about parents who otherwise seem like us but who risk their kids’ lives drunkenly weaving all over the road while their little passengers go along for the ride?

“People need to realize that it’s a form of child abuse,” said Elizabeth A. Obad, president of the Erie County chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

The tougher criminal penalties that went into effect Dec. 18 for driving drunk with kids— including making it a felony with the threat of stiff prison time—don’t seem to have gotten through. Since the new law took effect, the Erie County district attorney’s office has probed five such cases: A Utica woman already pleaded guilty; a Batavia woman and a Town of Tonawanda woman await trial; and two other cases are still being evaluated.

The fact that all five cases involve women no doubt stems from the fact that women still do most of the child-ferrying. When men do have a chance to take the kids, they can be just as dangerous. For proof, look no further than the Olean guy who collapsed drunk in a snow pile at Ralph Wilson Stadium a few weeks ago, leaving three kids crying in the cold. Even watching the Buffalo Bills is no excuse for that.

Luckily for the tykes, he never made it to the car. But if he had, the new law making the DWI charge a felony with the threat of prison might not have stopped him from trying to put the key in the ignition.

Would the prospect of having his kids taken away have been more of a deterrent if it had gotten as much publicity as the new law’s other provisions?

“Would it send a wake-up call to parents that there’s a lot to lose here? Yes,” said District Attorney Frank A. Sedita III.

“But it was that way under the old law, too,” he quickly adds, noting that the child-endangerment charges are still misdemeanors under the new law, as they were under the old statute.

Sedita did his part this week, making a point of ordering aggressive prosecution of those charged under the felony provisions of the new law, hoping to get through to parents who obviously haven’t gotten the message so far.

But maybe it’s time to try a new message: Drive drunk with your kids, and you might lose them. Or, at the very least, you might have your parenting monitored.

Those decisions, Sedita noted, are civil matters pressed in Family Court by social services officials, not criminal prosecutors. But social services workers can “pick up on the fact pattern” established by prosecutors and use that as the basis of a child-protection petition. That’s what happens in “shaken baby” and other abuse cases, he said, adding that it would be “fine” with him if social services officials do that in DWI cases.

County Social Services Commissioner Carol Dankert was at a conference this week and unavailable to comment. But if it’s not doing it already, maybe the department needs to start looking at broadening its definition of an unfit parent.

Maybe it’s time to include those who strap their kids in a car seat after tying one on.