Driver’s picture of toddler crawling across busy road sparks outrage

A driver's picture of a toddler crawling across a busy road has sparked outrage online.

Cory Cannon was driving in New Jersey earlier this week when he spotted a baby girl crawling on the road. CBS News reports that Cannon took a photo of the toddler and shared the picture to Facebook, writing; "Parenting at its absolute worse. ... I thought about my baby girl." The image, then reshared on CBS's page, has since been viewed over 78,000 times by parents asking how the infant could have made it that far before somebody spotted her. Cory said that he stopped and began shouting for someone to help him with the girl. He told the station:

"Someone actually came over, picked the child up, said it wasn't her child. "So we walked her over to the adjacent house, knocked on the door, the door was wide open. A toddler came and answered the door initially. Then the adult came. We explained to him what was going on and gave him his daughter back."

Cory went on to say that he hoped the incident wouldn't happen again. He said:

"It was like a shock to the system. You have to be more aware of your surroundings and be able to pay a little more attention to your children. "That's basically what it comes down to."

Many people took to the comments of the story to criticise the girl's parents for not noticing that she was crawling on the busy street. "How can you NOT miss a child this small in your home, to much quiet you start looking," wrote one person. "OMG Where is the mother?" asked another, forgetting that the toddler also has a father. And while we don't know exactly what happened to lead to the toddler crawling on the road, New Jersey's child protection agency is currently investigating the incident.