A mother’s recklessness - no words can describe
How does one describe a mother, driving a four-wheel vehicle and for her safety securely gets her seat belt on, yet she leaves her accompanying toddler on the back seat, not in a toddler’s safety seat, not strapped in as any adult travelling passenger will do and worse of all, leaves the doors unlocked?
As it happened, one’s worse fear unfolded like in a movie scene, a disaster!
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Video
A social media video went viral about a couple of weeks ago of the most irresponsible driver mother in town. Perhaps irresponsible or recklessness as a description of the act is a mere understatement. Too charitable, in fact.
In the video, driving around an area in the Airport Hills, Accra, this mother got to a roundabout and as she was negotiating the bend in the roundabout, the back right passenger seat door suddenly flung open and her toddler, seated on the back seat, was thrown out of the 4-wheel drive vehicle.
The toddler fell on the road, just like goods sometimes fall out of vehicles. She quickly parked the vehicle and with her flash lights on, ran to pick the toddler up. She went on to put him or her on the front passenger seat and drove off.
Imagine for a minute what trauma the little child must have gone through, the pains and the screams from the shock. A fall from a moving vehicle well above ground level for a toddler could only be imagined in a carefully planted and scary movie.
The unfortunate incident happened in a roundabout where speeding vehicles naturally slow down. In addition, as per the video, it happened on a road where vehicular movement was not that heavy.
Otherwise, could anyone imagine the fatality that could have occurred? Yes, another vehicle could have crushed that toddler as he or she fell out.
Safety
Question is, which responsible parent would put a toddler in a vehicle and not think of his or her safety? This safety includes appropriate toddler car seat. Others would even go beyond that and ensure the child safety lock in the car is engaged as well as enable the central locking system where it does not lock automatically. None of these was obviously employed in the case of this ill-fated incident.
Unfortunately, there are many more of such careless parents who drive or ride on our roads with no sense of safety in mind especially where they have young children on board.
We seem to take too many things for granted and that includes our safety and that of persons under our purview.
How many times does one not encounter on our roads, parents riding a bicycle or motorcycle with a child or two riding with them but with no safety apparel.
Meanwhile, they rather would have some safety protection on.
How many times does one not see a father driving a vehicle with mother in the front seat with a younger child sitting on her lap? Sometimes one sees this in taxis too.
I have even seen a father on a Sunday late afternoon pull up at a fuel station with his young child on his lap and holding the child’s hands to the steering wheel.
Fun, perhaps to him. A loving father with his child out for a ride, maybe he thinks. But really, it is recklessness at its
