Tragedy again struck on Nanjing’s roads earlier this week, when a young primary school boy was knocked from the back of the e-bike on which he was riding with his mother, to then be crushed to death by a passing road sweeping vehicle.
The accident took place in Nanjing’s Pukou District this past Sunday morning, 21 November, at 10:14, near Xiangshan Lu. Prior to the accident, the victim and his mother were stopped at a red light.
As the road sweeper slowly passed them by, something transpired to cause the e-bike to fall over. The young boy was as a result thrown into the path of the road sweeper’s oncoming rear wheels.
Three witnesses on the scene, a mother, her child and their grandmother, were standing beside the doomed e-bike waiting to cross the road. At the occurrence of the accident, the mother pulled her child away to prevent them from seeing the boy’s death.
Another, an e-bike rider trailing the accident victims, saw what had happened and immediately raced forward to the scene. The man took out his phone and called emergency services immediately and then dismounted his e-bike to see whether there was anything he could do to help.
While the cause of the accident is under investigation, the footage from surveillance cameras would appear to suggest that the e-bike, the boy or his mother was struck by the road sweeper’s out rigging on its right-hand side. The footage, released by The Paper, can be seen via this link.
It remains a sad fact that accidents like this happen on a daily basis in Nanjing. And, more often than not, the victims’ fates are the result of their own doing; through reckless riding, not wearing a helmet or abiding by traffic laws, etc.
However, what makes this accident especially tragic is the fact the victim’s mother was displaying exemplary road craft. Wearing a helmut, she had taken care to stop at the right side of the road in the correct designated lane and back from the stop line.
After the accident, the headmaster of the boy’s school took to social media to post a notice of mourning and offering condolences to all the parents in the victim’s class. The boy had been in Grade 3.
