Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Kids on the road: a scary situation


A UPS driver recently had a scary experience with a small child hiding in leaves piled up on the edge of a road.

Driver Jordan Weaver was in Elkhart, a town about 150 miles north of Indianapolis, on Nov. 5 when he spotted the barely visible boy hiding in a leaf pile inches from the road ... He first walked across the street to give a parcel to a woman who turned out to be the boy’s mother.

“I couldn’t believe it at first -- my heart completely stopped,” Weaver said when he saw the boy on the ground. “Luckily, I parked across the street from the stop, so I didn’t see the child until after I made the delivery. I immediately grabbed my phone and went and asked the mother if I could take a picture.”



Weaver shared his story with his colleagues and sent the photo to someone on a local UPS safety committee program, who then posted it to Facebook.

“He could have died,” said Dayana Botello, who saw the photo on the social media website. “I said ‘Oh my goodness, I have to be even more careful in paying attention to our kids.’”

There's more at the link.

The leaves are still dropping here in north Texas, and they're blowing around, forming drifts in places.  That picture was a pretty scary thought to me.  Can you imagine how you or I, or any driver, would feel if we ran over a small child play-hiding among them?  That's just too ghastly a thought to bear.

Please, friends, be careful on the roads.  This could happen to any of us.

Peter

5 comments:

Aesop said...

Darwin will collect his earnings.

I expect kids to be dumb like that. Because kids.
This is a parenting fail.

MadMcAl said...

The mother needs a whipping.
I just pity the driver that does not see the kid.
Even if s/he is not hold accountable before the law (good luck convincing a jury that no, it was not your fault that the kid was invisible) the psychological damage has to be tremendous.

Old NFO said...

That is just scary. And agree with MadMc... Living with that would be hard.

Will said...

Child appears to be bald. Blond hair would have been the equivalent of camouflage.

I suspect that after an incident, that leaf pile would be termed an "attractive nuisance" for legal purposes, especially if the child had been playing in a neighbor's pile. That is not a situation you want to be in, financially. Not feasible to childproof the world, but too many people in this country demand it be attempted.

Roy said...

I see these signs around here that say: "Drive like your kids live here!"

While I get what they are trying to say, a part of me is also saying: "How bout you keep your kids out of the road!"