Kid’s intuition
Nobody takes 8-year-old kids seriously, let alone one who speaks not out of experience or knowledge but rather gut feeling. This is what happened to the OP when he told his dad, who was driving at the time, to speed up. A construction crane on the side of the road looked as if it was going to topple, at least to the eyes of his kid-self.
Understandably, nobody took his warning seriously. However, after his family got back home and watched the evening news, they learned that the OP’s prediction was indeed correct. We can only imagine that the entire family looked OP dead in the eyes in wonderment.