8-Year-Old Boy Saves Mother's Life Once He Steered 60mph Car To Security After Seizure

Nov 07, 2019 by apost team

Ben Hedger saved his mom's life when she had a seizure while driving home from school one day.

The mom and son were in the car heading home from school, traveling near Colchester in Essex, England, when Hedger's mother, Lauren Smith experienced a seizure and fell unconscious while driving reports the The Mirror. Hedger was able to navigate the car to safety, but not without being frightened in the process.

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The two were only about five minutes away from home when eight-year-old Ben asked his mom a few questions and didn't get a response. When he looked over at her, he noticed that she was unconscious, and then the car hit the guardrail. Hedger did the only thing he could think of doing. He grabbed the steering wheel and maneuvered the car across the lanes of traffic into the grass, where he was able to bring the car to a stop. Luckily, surrounding passengers were able to notice something was wrong and slowed down to let the boy move the car to safety. People in two other cars noticed that there was something wrong, and they slowed down to drive parallel to Hedger as he maneuvered the vehicle across the road and into the grass.

Smith was out for the entire ordeal and didn't even realize what had happened until she was told after the event, while paramedics examined her. The explanation about her seizure that was given to her was that it was a freak one-off event that could have been triggered by stress, an oncoming cold or medication, or any number of other factors. Smith recounts the event like it was just a moment where she blinked for a second, one minute she was driving and the next the car was stopped and the car had traveled two miles.

As it turned out when Smith first had the seizure, she and her son were about two miles away from their exit, driving in the slow lane of the roadway but still going about sixty miles per hour. The car continued to plow forward after Smith fell unconscious, and when her heroic son took the wheel, he was able to navigate the rest of the way and across the road into the grass almost to their exit.

For his heroism, Hedger was awarded the Child of Courage Award at the Pride of Britain event. At Amplifon Awards for Brave Britons, Hedger won the Young Hero Award. Even Liam Payne, a former member of One Direction, took an opportunity to recognize Hedger by secretly playing against him on a video game at the Pride of Britain awards. Smith said it was funny watching her son as he realized who he was playing against.

This must have been really scary for Ben and his mother. The paramedics said that they were very lucky and if it hadn't been for Ben, things could have gone a whole lot different. What do you think you would have done if you were in Ben's position? Do you think you would have been able to react in time?