Car Seat on the Freeway

On our way home from visiting friends last night Mc was driving and I was looking out the window and I saw what looked like a broken car seat on the side of the freeway. This alarmed me because car seats should always be on the inside of a car and securely strapped in. There was debris all around it, too, as if it had been thrown out a window or fallen off a truck or something. We had driven past it at freeway speed so I only saw it for a second, but I was worried that if it was a car seat then there was a good chance that there was a baby inside it.

On a TV show called "World's Dumbest"--which is a show of actual home/surveillance videos of people doing stupid things, and actors & comedians comment on the videos-- there was one episode called World's Dumbest Drivers, and what happened was this guy stole his girlfriend's car, but her baby was in a car seat in the back of the car. He was being chased by police down the freeway (this was caught on the police car camera) and what he did was slowed down to almost a full stop, set the car seat and baby down on the road, and then took off again to try to get away. The baby was fine; the car seat had tipped over because the guy didn't set it down perfectly, but the baby wasn't hurt and the police were right there to take care of it. The show's commentators were pissed off (pretty much everyone's comment was "What the f***?!"), and Mc and I were shocked that someone would actually do that to a baby. So this video came to mind when I saw this car seat with debris around it, and I had to know if there was a baby inside.

We were at our exit for home but Mc hopped back on the freeway southbound and then swung around again so we could check it out. We didn't see it and we really wanted to get home but I wouldn't have been able to rest without knowing if everything was okay. So we did another flyby, this time going further back down the freeway, and this time we saw it. He pulled off onto the side of the road and put on his four-way flashers and I hopped out and waddled down the freeway to get a closer look, listening for a baby along the way. Much to my relief, it wasn't a car seat at all; it was some big plastic thing that I didn't recognize, but from the way it had broken I could see how it looked like a car seat from the freeway. So I picked it up and dragged it further away from the oncoming cars and headed back to our car.

It turned out to be nothing serious, but I'm so grateful for Mc who was willing to go back twice to check and make sure. If it had been a car seat with a baby inside, the baby would have needed immediate medical attention-- if it was even still alive-- and I didn't want to brush it off and hope that the thing on the road was nothing to worry about.