We certainly have no reservations about sticking it to Metro employees when they deserve it. But the flip side of that coin is making sure that employees who do things right are rewarded with praise — and the Metrobus driver in the video above deserves plenty.

In an clip that could have so easily resembled that disturbing 2007 video of a bus driver plowing over two women in a crosswalk, a driver of a 52 bus somehow managed to swerve at the last second to avoid hitting a four-year-old who ventured out into 14th Street traffic without warning.

As first reported by the Examiner, the video was captured by Metro’s new bus cameras, which turn on when the vehicles make sudden, irregular movements:

It shows the road stretched out ahead of the moving bus, with a monitor showing it cruising about 27 mph down the right lane. Then a small blur can be seen entering the roadway from behind a row of parked cars on the right.

It is hard to tell from the video, but the blur is actually a 4-year-old. The child apparently was trying to run from one parent to the other across the busy four-lane street, according to Metro’s Assistant General Manager of Bus Services Jack Requa.

You really have to look closely to see the child, who appears from the right side of the frame about nine seconds into the clip — so you can imagine how tough it’d be to see the kid while operating a bus. Such a collision would certainly have resulted in catastrophic injuries; fortunately, the bus driver was able to pull off the ninja swerve.