You know those cute little battery-powered ATVs that mimic mommy and daddy's car but travel at like one mile per hour and can barely make it past the driveway? Yeah, well, you may want to sell your Honda now, save some money, and consider one of those babies because, apparently, your kid can take his anywhere -- even as far as a busy highway.
An autistic 6-year-old boy in New York did just that when he managed to escape his family while they were at a park and take a joy ride on the Bronx River Parkway.
The child's family say they "lost track" of him at around 7 p.m. while they were hanging out at the park. He was playing on his toy ATV, and the next thing they realized, he was nowhere to be found. Forty minutes later, police say they started receiving all kinds of bizarre phone calls from people who said they saw a little boy riding his ATV on the extremely busy and crazy-dangerous parkway.
In this case, thank goodness, three good Samaritans saved the boy's life by slowing their vehicles down to form a barricade around the child so that a fast-moving car couldn't accidentally hit him. I mean, can you imagine? As a driver, a child riding a toy car would be the LAST thing you'd expect to find on a main road.
The child was taken to a hospital and has been reunited with his parents.
Okay, before we all start questioning why the adults at the park weren't aware that this boy had wandered off, let's remember: he was on a toy car. Before reading about this incident, I had always assumed these things were incapable of going any farther than the end of your block before dying a sudden death.
So the moral of the story is this: don't take your eyes off of your kids for one second -- even if they're riding a toy vehicle that's usually as slow as a turtle. You just never know what can happen.
Did you have any idea these toy ATVs could go so far? Does this change your mind about them?
Image ©iStock.com/pzAxe