Father Ticketed for Saving Son

What would you do? You’re taking your five year old son to feed ducks by the river and as you stop to choose a parking space, he hops out of the car and before you can do anything, your child runs towards the embankment, a 35 foot drop to the river. You’d do exactly what Frank Roder, of Winfield Park, NJ did. He jumped out of his 2006 Jeep Commander, ran to his boy and snatched him up, just a few feet from the ledge. As he was hugging his son, Aidan, the boy brought his father’s attention to the Jeep as it rolled into the Rahway River below.

Great story, no? Heroic father saves child. Here’s where it takes a turn into Alice’s looking glass. Union County police and a crane arrived on the scene. The Jeep was hauled out of the drink and surprisingly started right up, though Roder expects his insurance company to write the car off. While this was going on cop walked up to Roder and handed him two tickets, one for failure to produce proof of insurance, which was inside the soaked car, and one for not using his parking brake, $110 in fines all together.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Roder said. “He said, ‘If you would have taken the five seconds to apply the brake, this never would have happened!’

“I say, ‘Really? And if I did and my boy stepped over the edge and fell instead of the Jeep, then were would I be?’ He says, ‘Jail, for child endangerment.'”

Discuss amongst yourselves. My personal opinion here.

Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can dig deeper at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS