Police: 4-year-old drives mom’s car to video store (CNN.COM)
SAND LAKE, Michigan (AP) – A boy drove his mother’s car to a video store in the middle of the night, police said – and he’s all of 4 years old.
Although unable to reach the accelerator, the boy managed to put the car in gear and make his way to the store, a quarter-mile from his home, about 1:30 a.m. Friday, Sand Lake Police Chief Doug Heugel said. Finding the store closed, the youngster began a slow trip home.
Weaving and with its headlights off, the car got the attention of Officer Jay Osga, who first thought he was following a car that had been left running at a gas pump.
He flipped on his lights when the car turned into the apartment complex and struck two parked cars. The boy put the car in reverse and struck Osga’s cruiser.
The mother told police her son tried to drive the car earlier after she let him steer from her lap.
“He’s 4 years old. His mom didn’t even know he was up,” Heugel told The Grand Rapids Press. “I don’t think he even realizes what he did.”
No charges will be filed against the boy or his mother, Heugel said.
Arleen tells the story about the day she dropped by her friend’s house just as the friend was getting ready to go on an errand.
The friend was buckling her two year-old into the carseat, and the child was screaming at the top of his lungs. As the mother walked around to the driver’s side with the toddler still screaming from the back seat, Arleen asked, “What’s his problem?” The mother said, “He wants to drive.”
I pride myself on being able to recognize an urban legend when I hear one, so I wondered if this might be an example of one. Urban legends are often reported by the press as if true. This story is so incredible that it’s understandable why people would wonder. But, I don’t think it has the feel of an urban legend.
We’ll see. Maybe we’ll learn that an adult drove and bailed at the last minute…or something.
ABC’s Good Morning America had an interview with the officer who stopped the kid and the local police chief this morning. If it’s a hoax, it’s a pretty elaborate one.
My nephew, when 3 years old, drove the family minivan part way through the garage door. He grabbed the keys, started the car, and put it in gear. Like the child in the story, he had been allowed to sit in mom’s lap while driving - although I don’t recall if he was allowed to steer along with mom. Had the garage door been open, I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out he drove down the street, but as the door was closed the van was stuck halfway in and out of the garage.
No injuries, the cost of the van repairs & garage damage must have been high, but as a family anecdote…priceless.
So, is driving with a child in your lap legal in Michigan?
I know that seat belt laws and child restraint laws are terrible infringements on personal liberty, but I also recall the toothmarks that my niece left on the dashboard of our car when my father had to make a sudden stop. Fifteen miles per hour isn’t very fast for an automobile, but it’s a pretty good speed for a flying child. (She survived that, only to be killed by a drunken driver 14 years later.)
Amazing how those us of who predate seatbelt safety laws often rode around completely unrestrained, or in the back of the station wagon. I can’t for a second imagine going without a seatbelt anymore.
Yep. I saw a Great Dane that had done that when I was back in Monterey. There were great chunks of meat spread up and down the freeway. I coulda ended up like that.
Yup. I’m sometimes amazed I survived childhood. Riding in the back of the pickup, falling out of the barn hayloft, falling out of trees, getting thrown from a horse, getting sat on by a horse, getting shot with a BB gun, running into a barbed-wire fence, pestering my big brother, teasing my older sisters… Any of these could’ve killed me.
Seriously, though, now when I see kids (or dogs, for that matter) riding in the back of a pickup, I just think, “Stupid driver.” And yet, I never considered my own parents to be stupid for allowing us to do it. Looking back, I guess it was kind of stupid, though a bit less risky than now. (Rural area, less traffic, slower speeds.)
