This Sort of Pisses Me Off

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I work as a construction safety consultant and on a daily basis I see some bad accidents. It's usually a case of someone doing something they shouldn't do and there's a tremendous amount of pain involved as the victim didn't truly understand the consequences of the action.

I try and tell guys that they should stay clear of things that can knock them down that they don't see coming.

The photo above sort of caught my eye as something that just really shouldn't be done. Far be it from me to tell others how to live, but that's about a 3-year old kid in the sidecar of a motorcycle heading down Niagara Falls Boulevard.

Sure, the mom and dad on the bike no doubt have all the safety training in the world. Everyone was wearing helmets.

Speaking of which did you read the story about the guy who was riding his Harley helmet-less in a demonstration to protest the New York State helmet law?

He flipped the bike and died on the road in a town outside of Syracuse. The cops said he would have lived if he'd been wearing a helmet.

True story.

Anyway, as the kid went down the road he was holding a Winnie the Pooh blanket high. I'm not kidding.

Why would a mother and a father put a kid in a sidecar on a motorcycle? They can't possibly control the situation? What if a drunk driver sideswipes them?

I've always been cautious. I was never much fun when I went for a snowmobile ride with my brothers. They all had to wait up as Grandma Moses as they called me crept into the bar parking lot.

When the doctors at Women & Children's Hospital of Buffalo told me about the number of kids who break their necks on trampolines, I took our trampoline down.

"Oh, the kids love it," my neighbor told me.

"Couldn't live with myself if they landed wrong," I said.

I'm sure the 3-year old with the blankie riding in the sidecar loves to go out with Mom and Dad on their motorcyle ride.

What could happen to that kid just sort of pisses me off. It's child abuse, ain't it?

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