Is this 8 yr. old exceptionally tall to reach the brakes of the car right?

Is this a random question or do you have a story that goes with this question?

Here is the story:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/12/hungry-boy-8-steals-car-mcdonalds-youtube-tutorials/

An average 8 yr old is 4 foot 2, and an 8 yr old with a standard deviation (which means unexceptional) is about 4 foot 5. That means he could easily reach the brakes and accelerator if he was scooted up on the seat.

It is not a fake news story.

What is your question? It doesn’t make sense as asked unless we ignore the last word.

Four feet two inches may have some visual obstruction due to the top of the steering wheel—but reaching the pedals would not be a problem.

If a booster seat was an issue, they would not be able to reach the pedals

Did you google on Youtube to see if there is a video of it?

Yes, an 8 year old could drive, could reach the brakes, if the seat was all the way forward and he was siting on the edge of the seat.

Driving is something an average adult can’t manage to do just by watching a video, I don’t care how many times you watch it. You have to practice it. A lot.

We’re not just talking about reaching the pedals when not driving it. It’s reaching the pedals, and managing to go from gas to brake, and vise versa at the right time, and managing the steering straight etc. It’s just not that easy. Was there a traffic light, was there a turn he needed to make?

How do they know that it wasn’t a prank? Maybe someone put the kid in the driver’s seat just before the McDonald’s.

You’d have to _know for sure or assume
-He is not shorter than average for his age.
-He didn’t need to back up out of a driveway.
-There was a car seat booster available to him , because one of the drivers of the car happens to be what they call a “liitle person”
-He knew how to push the car forward.
etc.

The reporter can’t know that he didn’t hit anything on the way, even if there was no dent on the car.

From http://www.answers.com/Q/How_tall_is_the_average_8_year_old_boy?#slide=2
“the average height is 3 ft and 9 inches…”
“An average 8 year boy should be about 4 feet tall…”

@zenvelo One can’t be sure that it’s not a fake story. Impossible.

Look, @flo. You’re the one who asked the question. You didn’t post a link to the story you were referring to, so we can’t look at it to see if it might be fake or not.

But your own question does not refer to “little people.” It refers to an 8 year old child. If he sat at the edge of the seat, and the seat was shoved all the way forward, the average 8 year old could, conceivably, succeed in driving the car.
If he had sat on a booster seat he would not have been able to reach the pedals.

I’m pretty sure farm kids are out driving farm trucks in the field as soon as they can reach the pedals. My mom and her sisters were.

And it is most certainly possible to learn the basics of driving a car through a video. It doesn’t take a lot of practice to learn how to drive. It does to learn how to drive well, though, and to gain experience.

See the link for the article in the second post
The story was on the news a few days ago.

-Come to think of it yes, if he was on a booster makes it better too see everything, but impossible or harder to reach the pedals. So, It still makes my point. It’s not enough to just reach (i.e just barely touch it with the tip of the toes) the pedals.

-In my last post: please read ”... that he knew how to push the seat forward. (not the car)
There is too much assumption in order to believe the story. Bending over backward.

Yes, he could reach the pedals. It is possible. The link that the second post referred to might very well be from a hoax site. At the very least it’s frivolous. Look at the other headlines on it. But yes, it is possible for many 8 year olds to manipulate the pedals just enough to do what they want them to do.

Kids that age are driving trucks in the fields for their farmer fathers.

@flo The story was reported by the police in East Palestine, Ohio, and reported on reputable news stations. Why do you not believe it?

I found my statistics at the Mayo Clinic web site, not on a yahoo answers site. Check your sources, your link was fro someone unsubstantiated.

Can you post your links for us @zenvelo ?

Well here is the CDC height chart

Re. the chart from CDC, I don’t know if it’s me or that it’s is not user friendly, or something else. For example, why not use the word height instead of stature? And the CDC chart makes no mention of ethnicity etc. Other sites do.
@zenvelo I’ve aready itemized in my last post why I don’t believe it. feel free to address the items in my post.

@Dutchess_III farms and city streets are very different from each other. There is no contending with reckless or absent minded drivers, pedistrians, for one thing.

@Dutchess_III Also, no farmer says to their kid “Go watch the video, and then drive the tructor

This question was not about whether or not the kid drove well. The question was are they capable. Yes, they are physically capable of driving a vehicle, whether it be on a farm or in the city.

@flo I don’t know why you keep insisting that kids and people can’t learn anything from watching a video. That’s ridiculous, you know.

@Dutchess_III If the story is a hoax , you can’t say he drove well.

BTW, It’s far far far from driving well. It’s downright dangerous anyway, even if someone succeeded in not having an accident. Not the ideal thing that farmers’s or others’ children to do labor esp. like that kind, at whatever the youngest age is. There is no need to encourage So, the fact that it exists doesn’t make it ok.

If the story is a hoax you can’t say anything at all because it didn’t happen.
It if DID happen no one is saying the kid drove well. He simply drove.

OF COURSE IT’S DANGEROUS! Who the hell is encouraging anything? The farm kids drive a few yards at a time in fields. Not on streets. It’s just the way life is on farms. My Mom grew up driving trucks in the fields from a young age. I dated a farmer in college. Same thing. They just slowly, pretty much just idle, trucks beside combines and stuff, as machines pour grain into the bed of the trucks. Doesn’t take any skill except steering keeping a bit to keep it straight.

@Dutchess III
“It if DID happen no one is saying the kid drove well. He simply drove.” Actually,
the article implies that he drove well enough to 1) “He didn’t hit a single thing on the way there.” 2)He handled the steering well enough (no swerving) to not call attention to himself. So the message is an 8 yr.old can drive a car well enough, just by having watched a video. So it’s misleading and dangerous to encourage a kid who could be reading the article and the believers in the comment sections etc. ....etc

Re. your last paragraph, “The farm kids…..”
you agree with me then above, with my ” farms and city streets are very different from each other. There is no contending with reckless or absent minded drivers, pedistrians, for one thing.” Good.

Lots of people drive like shit but manage to avoid accidents for many years. Doesn’t mean they drove well. Means they got lucky, as was the kid.

If you have an 8 year old kid whose gonna steal your car and go for a drive just because they read an article, you, as a parent, have a problem.

My point about the farm kids is they are driving. They can reach the pedals and everything.

@Dutchess_III You’re agreeing with me that it could be dangerous enough, to drive in the streets, to one degree or another, for adults, never mind minors, and esp. as young as 8 yr. olds? Good.

Duh, @flo. Of course it is. But that wasn’t your question. Your question was “Can an 8 year old reach the pedals.” The answer is “Probably.” And obviously, in this case, he did.

We were kind of doing well? @Dutchess_III?

What? Doing well what?