Child hit by car on our street

Yesterday, a four-year-old girl was hit by a car on our street. She was in critical condition last night, but I don't know if her situation has been upgraded yet today.

When we bought this house, while I was still pregnant with Zooey, I surveyed the street situation very carefully. My first thought was it's a block away from a school, which means we're in a permanent 25 mph zone. My second thought was that people will drive slower because it's one of the older residential neighborhoods in town, so the street is literally only three car-widths wide. With parked cars on both sides of the street, only one vehicle can pass at a time here and there up the block, so you know that slows them down.

Wrong. The car that hit the girl was apparently going around 40 when the driver stepped on the brakes. Unable to avoid hitting the child, though, who was riding a scooter.

And part of it is her mother's fault. They must be new to the neighborhood, because I don't remember ever seeing them, but my husband saw them on Sunday and said the little girl was constantly riding her scooter down driveways and out into the street and all her mother did was complain in a tired voice, "Get back here, now." Never really enforcing it.

Plus the child wasn't wearing a helmet and landed on her head.

I don't know...maybe I'm just an overprotective mother, but I always make my kids wear helmets on trikes, scooters or rollerskates outside. I want to protect those little brains of theirs. And if they were to start rolling into the street for fun, I'd nab them and scooter-time would be over for the day.

Siiiigh. I can't help feeling like sometimes it's the parents who need most of the parenting.

Well, anyway. I told Zooey about it this morning on the way to preschool, reminding him again that he had to cross the street with a grown-up and look out for cars very carefully because people drive too fast on our street. He wanted to visit the little girl in the hospital, but settled for making her a card this afternoon. I hope I can find a news story so I can learn at least which hospital she was taken to, if not her name.

In the meantime, please pray for her recovery. And while your at it, a prayer for her parents and the driver of the car would be nice.

I'm going to have to call the non-emergency line of our police station and ask them what can be done about the speeders, though. With Laurel in tow, I move too slowly and sometimes Edyn dashes away from me before I can catch her hand. She's never stepped into the street, but it's only a matter of time before that occurs to her. She's too big for me to carry her and Laurel at the same time and too little to understand the danger. But I can't keep her in the house 24/7 either.

--Sparki