I was driving down Elliot Rd. last night minding my own business, when I saw a man riding a motorcycle with a baby in his lap. They were doing circles around the grassy area outside of the Newplex. Neither man nor baby was wearing a helmet. The mom stood by and watched, clapping and cheering. Also, I saw three cop cars drive by the scene and not stop.
Is it just me? Or is there something terribly wrong with this?
(bigger pictures after the break)
Popularity: 48% [?]
Tagged as: babies, behaving, child, dirt bike, motorcycle, trouble
jeez… shiffletts. what will they think of next?
i can’t believe that this is something that the mother endorses. i joke about taking the Peanut on the motorcycle with me in the Baby Bjorn because my truck doesn’t have a backseat, but it’s just a joke. Mrs Nut never really thinks it’s very funny though, for some reason.
piont of it being don’t put your nut were it will get crack!
survival of the fittest
dumber people mate faster, we RELY on things like this to thin the heard of idiots
next time, throw a stick in his spokes
survival of the fittest.
/not joking
4, you took the words right outta my mouth
@4 def didn’t see that, you took it out of all our moths. you sicko!
You know, from one perspective it seems bad to drive a kid around without safety equipment. But from another perspective: lighten up!
I used to get driven around in the back of pickup trucks, ride down steep hills on my bike (going over 35 mph) with no hands on the handlebars, and jump off the roof of the garage. It’s part of being a kid and having fun.
Many people are under the false impression that all these helmets, seatbelts, etc are what save lives. To be sure, they have their place, but for all of these things America is a very UNSAFE place.
In Guatemala people ride around in trucks, motorcycles, carts, you name it, with babies hanging all over them, and they have far fewer wrecks than we do. America spends more than any other country on the hospital birthing process and interventions, and yet our mother and infant mortality rate is almost the highest in the world.
If that man were to put his child in an approved safety seat, in a brand new vehicle with all the safety features, drive soberly and responsibly at the speed limit on I-64. WELL… he would have just done something far more reckless than what he is doing in these photos. Our fears and false perspectives of safety blinds us to the true dangers around us.
I see a Darwin award in that family’s future.
you don’t see a Motorcross championship trophy?
wow, ridiculous. i keep making people look at this and there’s the same response every time: “Is that a BABY?!?”
@4 is totally correct, survival of the fittest. but before this jackass dies, he might take some of the rest of us with him.
I don’t get it. The dad is driving, not the baby.
I see no problem with this, as long as they are going slow. I used to ride on my skate board behind my son’s stroller down SF hills. I got much horrified umbrage in the form of onlookers, but nothing ever happened. Twas fun.
Yeah, but it was all the baby’s idea.
as long as the baby is sober. and the dad has a gun.
i don’t see anything wrong with this.
@13 - but knowing Shiffletts and other folks who would do something like this, the baby isn’t sober, and both of them would be packing heat, with delusions of fighting the US government one day side by side… I am not totally joking.
In defense of the idiot probably breaking some kind of law in public, and doing something so highly contested in today’s media right next to the newsplex….
…he was going slow and only riding on the grass.
I, too used to crash my big wheel into things when I was younger. I fell out of trees. I also used to ride on the back of a 3-wheel ATV with my step dad. We flipped it a few times. I lived. Somehow I’m smarter/safer for all of it.
I jumped out of the back of a moving vehicle and touched an electric fence. And I turned out just fine.
I love the instant class profiling that happens in these articles. We need to learn to be a little less judgemental. And yeah I include myself in that statement.
@18 I was scared of cows for years as a child because I wandered off at a picnic when I was 3 to see the cows and touched an electric fence that was still on. I thought the cows did it. The farmer whose house it was had forgotten to turn it off. I didn’t turn out OK but thats beside the point.
So that’s why you always start laughing maniacally while eating cheeseburgers.
Articles like this kind of make me embarassed to post.
@8
you do have a point, but in this case, the child looks barely old enough protect itself in a fall and certainly is likely to burn itself on some of the hotter components of the engine. it would be different (in my mind) if the child was even a year or two older.
/still trying to talk Mrs Nut into a 50cc dirtbike for the Peanut…they come with training wheels!
Whoa I just noticed that poster’s name is Dr. Unk. Hilarious!
Is that kid going to magically explode because he’s sitting on a motorcycle? It is not going fast. I especially like the “minding my own business” disclaimer in the original post, and the photographer’s obvious intent not to be seen while taking the pictures. Sick! The webs is sick! Anyway, @8 jbretro’s facts about infant mortality are completely incorrect, look it up. And if you don’t think those roads in Guatemala have a high death rate, then what I think must be wronger.
Oh man, wow. I just saw this. Granted, it seems like a terrible idea, largely b/c I’m a big puss.
As far as the helmet thing goes, I think Jerry Seinfeld said it best: “Helmet laws are in place to protect a brain whose judgment is so poor, it refuses to wear a helmet in the first place.”
I’d never do that with my kid, but that’s me. This guy can do whatever the elf he wants.
Dunno bout the kid, but I am definitely gonna magically explode. Seems sorta inevitable. And awesome.
I remember two punk album covers from the 1970s, one of a spontaneously combusted English person in his parlor, the other of a family incinerated by US-funded contras in Central America. Both were revelatory. So I started subscribing to the Fortean Times and the (radical weekly) Guardian. One is out of business. Here’s the other: http://www.forteantimes.com/