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Saturday, October 15, 2016

When two great Sins collide



For some time I have noticed that people have been committing two sins against common sense. They are equal in their gravity and they are done without thinking by adults who should know better.

The first of these are those persons who take their very small children for a walk by pushing the child in a push chair. When they come to cross the street, instead of swinging the child around so that it is the adult who crosses first after making certain that it is safe, the child is simply pushed out into the street and is exposed to crossing traffic. It is something of an everyday miracle that we have not had to read of somebody's baby having been killed by being run over. However, parents if you continue this practise it will happen.

You will cry and you will have to suffer the indescribable pain of  having to bury your child who died because of your own  thoughtlessness. I'm sorry to be the one to bring you this reality, but at least you can consider this as an alert. You can also be the first one to set the example by pulling your child across the street. Others will get the point and the trend will develop.

I have written about this before, but of course no-one takes unsolicited advice from me. What is needed is a big push from Trafico ( the Dgt) to heighten people's awareness, but evidently they don't see this as the clear and  present danger that it is.

The other sin that most people have committed at least once is that of talking on the mobile while driving. I have done this by using the hands-free system, but even that is a distraction. That would be the best way of talking to someone by phone while driving if you really must, but it is not the same thing as speaking to a passenger in the car sitting beside you. Anything at all that distracts the driver is a bad thing.

We have now read a report that in downtown Valencia a driver was speaking on her mobile phone, presumably while holding it to her ear, when she came face-to-face with two children in the same push chair crossing the street. She was driving a 4x4 as she plowed right into them, fortunately at a very slow speed.

It appears that for those who saw what happened this was a scene of utter horror. However, she did stop promptly and determined that the children, while badly shaken up were probably not seriously hurt. She gave all her particulars and then left the scene. I prefer to think that she left because of the trauma of what she and the children's father had done.

This was a wake-up call that says we really must change the way we do things to avoid a full-scale tragedy, one that will take place. It's just a question of "When."

Copyright (c) 2016
Eugene Carmichael