A four year old boy drove his mother’s car to the video store. The full story is here (http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/07/young.driver.ap/index.html)
Gleek just turned four.
Yikes.
11 thoughts on “I’ve discovered a new nightmare”
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A four year old boy drove his mother’s car to the video store. The full story is here (http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/02/07/young.driver.ap/index.html)
Gleek just turned four.
Yikes.
Comments are closed.
Ok, now I’m going to be staying up late tonight. Xander is 5 and Marquella is 3 (almost 4) and between the 2 of them, they are quite resourceful.
A closer reading of the article has dispelled my fears. That mother taught her son how to drive and to believe he could do it by himself. She didn’t think that was what she was doing when she held him on her lap and let him steer the car, but that’s what she did.
I have very strong feelings about kids and car seats. This just confirms them.
Yeah. The steering wheel is the interesting part of a car – particularly since all the pedals and such are hidden underneath. From a car seat in back, Mommy turning the wheel this way and that is all a child can see… and I remember seeing my little siblings pretending to drive. The main pantomimed action is of course arms extended to the front, gripping an imaginary wheel and twisting it back and forth.
They’re lucky the child’s alive, I think.
Marquella and I went up to a friends house and she sat on his lap and played some car game (I think it was Nascar) and she couldn’t reach the pedals, but boy did she have fun just steering the wheel.
Well, he couldn’t reach the gas pedal, so he’s likely to have been going around 3 or 4 MPH in an auto transmission car. He’d have to be rather unlucky to have been killed at that velocity, but it can be accomplished in an area with steep cliffs and the like.
He doesn’t have to be going fast at all for an unobservant driver to run into him at 30 mph. I doubt he had the head lights on and so was probably difficult to see. I also doubt he had a seatbelt on. A 30 mph impact can be serious to a child with no seatbelt.
Quick, hide the car keys!
Actually my car keys have been missing since Sunday afternoon. I’ve been using a spare set. In context that suddenly seems ominous. 😉
I’m just figuring that he probably took a somewhat major road at some point, and turning onto one of those can be dangerous when you have no idea what you’re doing – though running off the road wouldn’t likely have been a big deal.
Better start seeing if the bed is slept in and smelling breath for fruit juice…
Yeah, of course unobservant drivers are a problem any time you have a kid (or anyone) without a seatbelt.