Motorists Who Run Over Children Are A Disgrace

Editor | Monday August 23, 2010 00:00

The area where the accident happened is both a neighbourhood area and a shopping centre. What sort of speed was this driver going that he could not control his vehicle as it veered off the road?

We can only surmise that one of several things might have happened: the driver could have been drunk; the driver was asleep; the driver was speeding and careless; the driver is not qualified.

Whatever the case, the fact remains that children have been injured. A young girl lies at Princess Marina Hospital fighting for her life as her siblings carry both emotional and physical scars of the accident.

The children will forever carry the knowledge that it could have been any one of them - or all of them taking the worst of the out of control vehicle.

We cannot even begin to claim to know the terrifying grief that has come upon the family of the young girl whose life hangs by a thread. 

We have said it before: children playing or walking in the road environment can only be protected by those adult road users who happen to be passing the area where the children are.

It is a basic principle of driving that when as a driver you see children you must slow down to a point where you would be able to avoid hitting the children should it become necessary.

It is foolhardy for anybody to think that children, in a particular locale are used to vehicles and would therefore know to keep away from them.

Children remain children, with all the curiousness and inquisitiveness that are part and parcel of being a child, regardless of where they grow up.

Too many children are hit by vehicles every month because some driver who should have thought for them, and behaved like a parent decided to instead become a maniac.

How does anybody in their right senses pass at high speed past a group of five and six-year-olds playing by the roadside? Worse still as a more careful driver you may flash for them in warning.

The case of the four Ntlhantlhe children is not different from any other where children are run down by a vehicle.

Had the driver been sensible to the fact that he needed to drive at controllable speed in the area and also to slow down when he saw children, he would not have caused so much harm to the children.