Vehicle drivers will have all, at one point, stepped on the accelerator instead of the brake. And then hoped that wouldn’t happen again in a more-serious situation. But it did recently, and very fortunately a crowd came to the rescue, before the police even arrived.
It was in Suzhou on 19 May that a car ended up in one of the City’s many canals for which it is so famed. In it were one adult male and a young boy. The car began sinking.
A witness to the events, a Ms. Qin, said that the vehicle had turned a corner and then promptly sped up instead of slowing down, careering into the canal. Qin said she believed the driver had put their foot on the accelerator and not the brake.
Qin added that a child’s crying could then be heard coming from the car.
But the canals of Suzhou are popular places. As a result, there was no shortage of people along the canal banks willing to help.
Several wasted no time in entering the waters. As can be seen in a video report by The Paper published in the afternoon of the same day, one man pulls frantically at a door handle on the car, while others attempt to gain entry from the vehicle’s roof.
That’s when the principal hero, another man who had wisely and quickly availed himself of a hammer, leapt into the canal.
He swam up to the car and with a hasty, heavy blow, was able to shatter the vehicle’s rear windscreen.
With water now gushing into the car, its sinking into the depths of the canal quickened.
But as a result, the men in the waters were then able to extract the two passengers from the car and into a boat that had been brought alongside to facilitate in saving the them.
That’s when the police decided to show up. With nothing else to do, they were left to track down the men who had participated in the rescue to make the appropriate commendations.
