7 year old girl drives for help after dad crashes car

[Darth Wong]

http://www.cbc.ca/cp/Oddities/090527/K052704AU.html

7-year-old New Mexico girl drives for help after crash kills dad
Published: Wednesday, May 27, 2009 | 11:38 AM ET
Canadian Press THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

CLOVIS, N.M. - Police in New Mexico say a seven-year-old girl drove the family's damaged vehicle to get help after her father was killed in a crash.

State police Capt. Jimmy Glascock says 40-year-old Guillermo Montes of Bovina, Texas, was thrown out of the vehicle Saturday night when it rolled off a highway.

Glascock says little Elizabeth Kazza realized her father was dead and drove for about five kilometres until a passing motorist spotted her.

Authorities found Montes dead at the scene. The girl and her four-year-old brother were treated for minor injuries.

State police said Wednesday that Elizabeth told officers her dad was driving to Clovis, about 40 kilometres from Bovina, to get beer when they crashed.

They said alcohol was believed to be a factor in the crash.

Occasionally, these stories come along which remind you of just how large the gulf is between socio-economic classes. I honestly could not even imagine anyone I know ever doing something like this: driving around drunk with your two kids in the car, looking for more beer. And while it's nice that the girl was sufficiently aware to assess her father's condition and then drive for help, you know she's only so independent because he neglected her on a regular basis and left her to fend for herself.

[Drooling Iguana]

Occasionally, these stories come along which remind you of just how large the gulf is between socio-economic classes. I honestly could not even imagine anyone I know ever doing something like this: driving around drunk with your two kids in the car, looking for more beer.

And, judging by the cause of death, without a seatbelt.

[tim31]

Nor was she wearing a seatbelt. She was thrown from the fucking car.

On long weekends in some Australian states, drivers can lose their whole licence for two people not having done up their seatbelt.

[White Haven]

It says the 40-year-old was thrown from the car, not his kid.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Notice that he was driving a huge distance to get alcohol. This isn't just about socioeconomic class but about the fact that a large number of Texas' counties are dry counties which still ban alcohol sales, so he had to leave his own town and drive across the border with New Mexico to get more booze.

[Gaidin]

He lived 10 miles from the Texas-New Mexico border...huge distance?

[Nephtys]

He lived 10 miles from the Texas-New Mexico border...huge distance?

40km = 25 miles.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

25 miles to go to the store of a couple beers is pretty insane, when in the ideal world you'd walk to the store and walk back and it would be maaybe a mile away. The only time I drive that far to go to the store (which is a 50 mile round trip, about the same as the maximum typical commuting distance in America), would be when I stuff the car to the brim with two or three months worth of nonperishables at a Costco, so I'd assume that he lived in a dry county, or one that severely restricted alcohol sales, since there are a lot of those in Texas.

[Mr. Coffee]

I've got a 10 mile round trip to the nearest 24hrs convenience store that sells beer and about twice that to get to the nearest supermarket. But unlike the dumbass dad in the OP, I keep a second fridge full of beer out in the garage stocked just so neither myself or any guests have to drive for more if we start drinking (I only really need to go for a beer run once every other month these days). A friend of mine lives the next county over in Limestone CO, which is dry, but the city of Athens is a wet city, so even he doesn't have that far to go. Now if you lived in Winston CO you'd have a good 60 mile drive to the nearest wet city or father if it's after hours. Basically, if you drink, think ahead and don't live in the religious retard backwater dry counties. Or be like me, get a second fridge, and keep it well stocked.

[tim31]

It says the 40-year-old was thrown from the car, not his kid.

Whoops, missed that the first time. In which case I assume both her and her brother were wearing seatbelts.

[Glocksman]

It says the 40-year-old was thrown from the car, not his kid.

Whoops, missed that the first time. In which case I assume both her and her brother were wearing seatbelts.

One of the dumbest things I have to confess that I once believed was that you had a 'right' to refuse to wear a seatbelt and that seatbelt laws were nanny-statism at its worst.

Similarly, you'll see a vocal minority of motorcyclists insist that they have the right to ride without a helmet.
My instructor when I took a BRC last year put it this way: "In this state you aren't required to wear a helmet, but on the other hand the concrete isn't required to cushion the impact when some dumbass ignores a stop sign and runs into you".

As it is, I now support both mandatory seat belt and helmet laws.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I love how bikers still got mad when some states proposed helmet laws that had exceptions for people who were licensed organ donors. Well, that's what you're doing when you ride a motorcycle without a helmet, dumbass, donating your organs to someone who needs them--you don't.

[Darth Wong]

I like to retort to the "nanny state" bullshit by pointing out that anybody stupid enough to reject seatbelts obviously needs a nanny.

[Oskuro]

Apparently, driving with no consideration for other drivers or pedestrians is a God-given right to mankind, and any attempt to say otherwise is a treason to the species.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I hearby nominate that little girl for a future "Don't Mess With Texicans" award, simular to the BAMF.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Also note, my auto-diadic period was primarily a result of neglect in favour of my mom & stepdad #1s drugs and alcohol problems, leading me to find shelter away from them in good, books, I just snuck over to the grownups section of the local public library at age 7.

[tim31]

Apparently, driving with no consideration for other drivers or pedestrians is a God-given right to mankind, and any attempt to say otherwise is a treason to the species.

In Bill Bryson's travel diary The Lost Continent, the two subtypes of consistently bad drivers were native americans who appeared to be fluxing between consciousness and unconsciousness at the wheel of an Impala with ten passengers, and little old Texan men in pickups who would pull out onto the highway from a crossroad when you were within two hundred metres of the intersection that they had sat at for as long as you had been approaching.

This book is based upon a round country road trip done in the mid-late eighties; I wish he'd do a follow up trip now to see the differences.