In China, a Grandfather Drives Away Without Realizing His Granddaughter Had Rolled Out of His Van (Video)

A video of a toddler rolling out of the back of a van in busy traffic on a Chinese thoroughfare went viral recently on Chinese social media.

In the 30-second clip, which appeared to be recorded using a dashboard camera, the rear door of a white van suddenly popped open as the vehicle was accelerating away from a traffic intersection. A child in pink falls out, stands up, and wisely begins jogging toward the side of the road. Later, a middle-aged Chinese man runs back to the intersection to retrieve the child.

Li Haoqing, a worker for a technology company at Wujiang District, Suzhou whose co-workers filmed the incident, told Chinese news portal Sina in a March 1 report that the incident happened on Feb. 27, and that his co-workers were the ones who saved the child.  The grandfather and the driver of the white van is named Yang Defu.

Yang explained that his granddaughter was originally sitting next to him at the front seat, but she went to the back of the van to play. The rear door swung open because it was broken, ever since an earlier incident, Yang added.

On Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like service, the video has gone viral with over 32,000 shares, 12,000 comments, and 30,000 likes.

One netizen from Liaoning wrote “A brave baby who didn’t just sit there and cry.”

Another netizen wrote “The driver who saves the girl has done an extraordinary deed. The careless parents shouldn’t have allowed this to happen.”