How not to launch safely.

[JumbleDuck]

I'm reminded of the time I heard my car's numberplate announced over the PA when I was in the supermarket - you know, the "Will the owner of XX99 ABC please contact...."
Turned out that the handbrake hadn't engaged and the car had slowly slid out of its parking bay.

When I was a baby a woman came up to my mother in the post office and said "I thought it was a shame that your baby could only see the wall, so I turned the pram round". My mother, who knew what I was capable of and had parked the pram that way on purpose, ran out of the shop to find that that I had bounced the pram across the pavement and was half way across a zebra crossing, with cars in both directions on the busy main road stopped. It had apparently not occurred to anybody to stop me. Perhaps they were taking bets on how far I would get.

The post office was where "Hughes Shaunnessy" is now, and the pavement was as wide then as it is today, so I had made quite a fair distance.