I was driving home from work yesterday, and got the scare of my life. I was driving past a bus shelter with two 9 or 10 year old boys waiting for the bus in it. One of the boys sprinted out to the road like he was intending to cross right in front of my car. I slammed on the brakes knowing that I couldn’t stop in time not to hit him (I wasn’t speeding - I had just come off of a red light), but he backed off when he reached the curb, waved at me with a big grin on his face, and went back to laugh about it with his buddy. My heart was pounding like I was going to have a heart attack, my nerves were screaming, my adrenaline was pumping - I thought I was going to kill this kid. One of my worst nightmares about driving is hurting someone with my car (caused, no doubt, by a near miss I had with a highway worker running out after his hardhat without looking when I was a very young driver). This kid thought what he had done was funny.
So, my plea is to any kids reading this, and the parents of kids reading this - please, don’t do this to a driver. It’s not funny at all; I was nearly in tears when the reaction set in after I thought I was going to badly hurt a kid. It’s reckless, it’s irresponsible, and it’s just plain mean. I just realized how dangerous it is, too - he could have tripped and fallen into traffic, or I could have been rear-ended by a car following me. Just a really bad thing all around.
Oh God - you’ve just described a nightmare of mine. The idea of hitting someone with a car terrifies me, and if a kid had done that while I was driving, I’d have ended up pulling over somewhere and giving both of them hell, just because they scared me so bad.
I came up to another red light just past them, with a parking lot off to the side. I was extremely tempted to pull into the parking lot and go back and “explain” to these boys why that was not funny.
But calling it “not funny” is just silly. Of course it’s not funny to those of us having heart attacks. It’s not suposed to be. It is, however, undeniably funny to the idiot kids.
Exactly, happyheathen. When this happens, what you’re seeing is evolution in action. Nature is trying to eliminate this kind of idiocy from the genetic pool, but our laws are thwarting its efforts.
My goodness, my heart is pounding from reading that. I hope the next person that kid does that to is a large, burly truck driver who will make it very clear why that is a bad idea.
This happened to me only once, in the mid-80s. I was living in the SF bay area at the time. The incident occurred in SF itself. The little twit was a girl, probably around 12, wearing some kind of school uniform IIRC. After I came to a panic stop, she laughed and crossed the street.
Regarding the OP and parents, I feel confident in saying most if not all parents aren’t even aware their kids do this kind of shit, much less warn them about it.
Unless of course some tragic accident results.
I agree with those who advocate stopping and telling the baby Darwin candidates exactly what can happen.
A slight aside regarding the post about shoving kids into the street. A good friend of mine had this happen to her 13 yr old son.
He was killed instantly by an innocent driver.
In sick cases such as this, I remain a staunch advocate of frontier justice. I bet those kids wouldn’t be laughing so hard after being beaten with your tire iron.
But honestly, do you really think that’s going to matter? How many teenagers that would do this in the first place are going to stop because they get a stern talking-to by an adult?
You’re trying to tell us to teach teenage boys not to be teenage boys. They’re idiots. They’re supposed to be idiots at that age. And sadly, some of them are not gonna get much older. Maybe it’s natural selection at work.
But teenage boys are ALWAYS gonna pull stupid stuff like this.
The year is 1979. 9-year old Rilchiam and Bus Stop Girl, same age, in autumn of the first year they were allowed to wait without parental escort. The road, being rural, has no curb: the blacktop ends abruptly before the ditch, with a white line painted a few inches away from the edge. Speed limit on road is 25, and cars pass by at the rate of roughly one every three minutes.
Rilchie: Let’s see how close we can stand to the white line.
BSG: You mean when a car’s coming?
R: Yeah, see how close we can get. [Adult Rilch: :eek:]
BSG: Maybe we can touch the windows as they go by. Here comes a car…
R: Oh, he’s swerving to avoid us; we better get outta the road.
BSG: Was that Mr. Neban?
R: God, I hope not. He’ll tell our parents for sure.
