Life is so precious…

On Friday a terrible thing happened just outside our home, a boy (who I am not naming) was knocked down by a car. He was 10 and on his way to school with his twin brother and best friend, the best friend lives in the house opposite us. The group of 10 year olds were just on their way to school, like any other normal day and not a care in the world. I was cleaning the dog mess in the garden, must have been 7:50am and I heard a loud bang, so loud that I  assumed a car had gone into another car. I heard shouting and a lady screaming and so I ran in to the house and said to hubby, I think there’s been an accident out the front. We always check because our road is quite dangerous, we get a lot of drivers zooming past and knocking our wingmirrors off etc, so we always worry that our car will be a crumbled mess one of these days. But no, it wasn’t a car, I went running out of the side gate, in my wellies, holding a poop bag and saw the boy, lifeless, on the side of the road. The driver was in a state, crying her eyes out and there was a couple of people talking to the boy. Hubby had covered him in blankets, as it was freezing cold Friday morning and he was on the phone to the ambulance.

I started to stop the traffic from either sides as people were not stopping, even when the ambulance showed up 5 mins later, cars were still trying to squeeze past. It wasn’t until the police came and blocked the road 20 mins later that the cars stopped.

The boy was lifeless from the crash, up until his mum came running around the corner, with horror on her face, you could see she was thinking the worst, as was we all at this point. He had been hit by a car that must have been going about 20mph, I heard the bang, it was quite an impact. The car had a broken head light, round smash in the windscreen and a dent in the bodywork, so it hit him pretty hard. Hubby explained that he was walking out the driveway from the house opposite and had walked straight into the road without looking. The car had hit him and carried him 10 metres or so up  the road, so he fell level with our front door.

It was horrific, I cried all morning, apart from when I was sitting with the driver and making sure she was drinking her sugary cuppa to help with the shock. Life is so precious, one minute its there and the next minute something happens and it could be wiped from you in milli seconds.

Thankfully the boy had no broken bones and is now back at home with his family, recovering. Apart from loss of memory around the accident and a little dazed, he is doing well and will be fine. But, it could have been so much worse.

I now drive with a whole different mindset and I certainly am more aware of the cars when me and Noah are walking down the street.

Green Cross Code will be drilled into Noah over the next couple of years….