'Summertime' Tragedies Happen All Too Often

A man was purposely mowed down by a speeding SUV while riding his bike. A 6-year-old drowns in a lake.  A 22-month-old left in a hot car for hours dies strapped to a car seat. A 13 year old struck by two cars while riding his bike died.

Those aforementioned incidents sound like the typical laundry list of summer Peach State tragedies. There is an irony here: as of this writing, summer has not officially started. Certainly for those of us in Georgia summer basically starts on Memorial Day, so psychologically, we’re deep into the hot, humid and bright sunshine season which brings a spike in these horrible.

All of these tragedies were preventable.

Immediately after the 22-month-old died on June18, the questions flooded in such as “How could a parent forget his child in the backseat of a car?” Unfortunately it just happens all too often – one tragedy is more than enough. According to kidsandcars.org, on average, 38 children die each year from automobile heat-related deaths. In fact, the problem has gotten so bad, this state’s governor launched the “Look Again” campaign.

Still, the questions keep coming in as to how a father could leave his child in a scorching hot car and go to work. Could it be that this parent - like most of us -  are creatures of habit –meaning that on most days, he doesn’t take the child to daycare so he goes through the motions without thinking every day. It’s just that on that June day, this father was assigned to change his routine leading to the tragedy?  Or was there so much on this father’s plate in life that allowed this horrifying error to happen? At this time, the father was charged with murder so this story has a lot of time to play out to a conclusion.

Even with all of these awareness campaigns, tragedies like a 6-year-old drowning in a lake still happen throughout the summer. That particular incident happened on June 13 at Lake Allatoona. The boy’s body was found in about four to five feet of water, approximately 25 to 30 feet from shore. Again, are folks too busy and tuned out as to when a child wanders out onto a log from a camp site near water? On a related note, this child was the third person to die on that lake this year.

Only five days after the boy drowned, a 13-year-old was riding his bike attempting to turn onto Gwinnett County’s busy Club Drive when he was struck by not one, but two cars. The child died just over four hours later. In this incident, the drivers are most likely not at fault. The problem here is the usual poor Atlanta metro area development where there are few bike paths and busy narrow roads making it a challenge for bikes and automobiles to co-exist.

Just the other week, a man was riding his bike in Atlanta. Apparently a scuffle between the cyclist and SUV driver ensued. The SUV driver deliberately mowed down the cyclist. Again, are we all in such a hurry on these roads where aggressions need to be taken out on cyclists? Indeed it’s a two-way street whereby cyclists express their anger back at the drivers on the road, thus forgetting that they are on a much smaller, unprotected mode of transportation.

As of this writing, the summer is young. Here’s hoping that the tempers will cease matching the hot temperatures out there. Also, let’s hope that there will not be one more cyclist scuffle, child heat-related death or another drowning.