[ad_1]
On Tuesday we celebrate Car Free Day. Students traveling by bus, car, bicycle, scooter or roller skates traditionally competed on the streets of Klaipėda. To everyone’s surprise, the student who rode the scooter won this year. He arrived at the agreed place, of course, without a helmet. This detail did not bother anyone around 8 in the morning. Police officers who commented on the race on city streets were also not caught. But after 7 minutes of communication about a disaster in the suburbs, just a few miles from the university, everything worked out.
The fourteen-year-old told his parents on a sunny Tuesday morning that he would ride a scooter to school in the city center for those few miles from the suburbs. He took the scooter out of his father’s trunk and took it out. Without a helmet, as well as a student who participated in the race and received congratulations. The journey ended soon. Always.
The screeching of the brakes and the pain of the parents who went to work on the same street. Life in the suburbs froze for a short time: the parents who took the children to the nearby kindergarten froze, the cars slid through the traffic jam. The silence was disturbed by the mother’s cry and the driver’s sigh, after which the electric scooter got stuck in the car’s wheels: “I did everything according to the rules!” And reassuring the drivers, who did not lose their sobriety and could call the services: on our wheels “.
Police officers who arrived early at the crash site, who were also in the same race to commemorate Car Free Day, already told reporters on camera: “Helmets are mandatory for electric scooter drivers!”
It was like a mantra playing all day in the radio airs, in the portals. But have we learned most of that lesson that day?
That same night, in a small community of suburban residents, words of sympathy were replaced by new video recordings of children riding out of electric yards onto main streets on electric scooters. He leaves without a helmet and does not even turn his head to see if the car is coming.
Crossings, sidewalks are necessary, but will installing them on all suburban streets help?
At night, when the emotions experienced in the morning still dominated, I had to drive through the streets of Klaipeda. The infrastructure here nobody complains. However … the cry of a mother who lost her child cried again as a teenager on a rented green scooter entered the intersection. Without a helmet, without looking around. Disaster averted, but has the lesson been learned?
[ad_2]
