Screenshot of the video clip shows the girl walking alone ahead of her mother. (Web pic)
BEIJING, Oct.31 (Xinhua) -- The death of a toddler last week has triggered outrage over parents who are obsessed in smartphones and neglect their duty of parenting.
A 2-minute video clip, widely shared on the Internet, captured a horrific scene of a 2-year-old girl being hit and then crushed by a car. When the accident took place, the girl was walking alone ahead of her phone-engrossed mother. The girl didn't survive. Police investigation said that the girl walked into the driver's blind zone.
Netizens expressed their anger over the mother, saying that she should have kept an eye on her child. They said that parents should keep their responsibility and duty in mind.
"If the mobile phone was so much fun, then why had you given birth to the child?" asked web user "Xiaodingdangmaimaijimiqiu".
"It is a bloody lesson. Everyone should be alerted not to play with a smartphone while walking. God knows how regretful the mother is," a netizen in the username of "freeermiao" wrote on China's twitter-like microblog Weibo.
The accident was not a single case. In April this year, a two-year-old boy ran into the center of a road while his mother was mesmerized by her mobile phone in east China's Anhui province. The boy was hit by a car and died. In August last year, a similar tragedy happened in central China's Henan province when a boy was hit by a car in a parking zone. His mother was checking phone somewhere else when the boy was knocked down.
Parents have been urged to curb their smartphone addiction. In China, more than five in 10 adults own a smartphone. Over half of the people questioned in a poll conducted by Deloitte check mobile phone for 1 or 2 times per hour, and one fourth of the interviewees check their mobiles for over 50 times a day.
Child Accident Prevention Trust, a UK children's charity, has warned that parents obsessed in their mobile phones are putting their children in danger of serious accidents.
Almost a quarter of parents were engrossed in their devices when their children suffered an accident or had a near miss, according to a new research it released.
