Inconsiderate drivers and kids who walk to school

My daughter walks or rides her scooter or bike to her elementary school
every day. Because the route goes on a footpath, it's only a quarter mile;
the route by motor vehicle is four times longer. The biggest problem right
now the kids walking is all the other parents who drive. She only has one
street to cross, and of course there's crossing guards, but the parents
still do not seem to respect the pedestrians in the vicinity.

Someone alerted me to this website: http://drivetoschoolhallofshame.com/
that has photographs from a different school, of all the chaos caused by
parents who are driving their kids to school. What is this craziness? WIWAK,
the only time you got a ride from school was when you were sick or
something.

--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
Personal page: http://www.geocities.com/cpetersky/
See the books I've set free at:
http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky

"Claire Petersky" wrote in message
...

Someone alerted me to this website: http://drivetoschoolhallofshame.com/
that has photographs from a different school, of all the chaos caused by
parents who are driving their kids to school. What is this craziness?
WIWAK,
the only time you got a ride from school was when you were sick or
something.

Our town has a *huge* problem with this. It's become a very serious safety
issue. Not only do they not walk if outside the bus radius, but the busses
are practically empty because so many parents drive their kids to school.

JennP.

to be safe, you want to drive her to school. cars are not the only
threat. your child is still at elementary, too little to walk by
herself, shortcut tends to be in obscure area.

On 2005-09-17, Sushi Fish wrote:
to be safe, you want to drive her to school. cars are not the only
threat. your child is still at elementary, too little to walk by
herself, shortcut tends to be in obscure area.

Wrong---the health hazard of being in a car far exceeds the risks of
being a pedestrian, except in the very worst neighborhoods.

For pedestrians and bicyclists, cars are not the *only* threat, but
they are the biggest threat to kids of death or serious injury by
orders of magnitude.

The attitude that everyone *ought to* drive their kids everywhere is
probably one of the largest contributors to the obesity epidemic in
the US.


------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
(Senior member, IEEE) (Board of Directors, ISCB)
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Affiliations for identification only.

In article . com,
"Sushi Fish" wrote:

to be safe, you want to drive her to school. cars are not the only
threat. your child is still at elementary, too little to walk by
herself, shortcut tends to be in obscure area.


It is exactly this attitude that is creating the safety problem:
everyone drives their kids to school, because of what I think is
misplaced anxiety -- at least, in most areas it is misplaced.

I've been astounded at what some people think are "unsafe" areas for
children to walk in, with no evidence other than the general growing
paranoia.

Add to that that so many of the parents who drive do NOT pay attention
to the pedestrians . . .

And that the schools were not designed to have safe drop-off/pick up
areas . . .

For a while, I was driving my kids to high school (there was a good
reason at the time!), and I was astonished both at how MANY kids were
being driven, and at the total lack of anything approaching safe
driving! Where I live, I almost always have to drive past at least one
elementary or middle school to get anywhere, and I do my damdest to
avoid driving past them just as school is starting or letting out, since
the driving tends to be nuts -- and the parents nuttier. I mean, what
kind of an idiot gestures at a kid to cross a 4 lane street in the
middle of the street in heavy traffic, because they're in too big a
hurry to let the child walk to the corner and cross the street at a
light with a crossing guard!?!

(Can you tell you've hit a nerve here?)
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

Claire Petersky wrote:
My daughter walks or rides her scooter or bike to her elementary school
every day. Because the route goes on a footpath, it's only a quarter mile;
the route by motor vehicle is four times longer. The biggest problem right
now the kids walking is all the other parents who drive. She only has one
street to cross, and of course there's crossing guards, but the parents
still do not seem to respect the pedestrians in the vicinity.

Someone alerted me to this website: http://drivetoschoolhallofshame.com/
that has photographs from a different school, of all the chaos caused by
parents who are driving their kids to school. What is this craziness? WIWAK,
the only time you got a ride from school was when you were sick or
something.

I rode to a school (kind of magnet school before its time) that didn't
offer bus service and was more than 2 miles away. We carpooled with
someone whose dad worked near there.

Today, I don't think it's generally a case of Mom/Dad believing their
young prince/princess shouldn't have to muddy those expensive athletic
shoes, at least not around here. I think there are safety/practicality
issues that make driving the kids look like the better option. Our
neighborhood has fewer kids attending public school (some are
homeschooled, some attend private schools without local bus service)
and so there's less of a "safety in numbers" protection for everything
from child predators to classroom bullies to unleashed dogs. Plus,
there are fewer moms at home during those hours to keep an eye out than
there were WIWAK.


Around here, all kids are offered bus service but the school board's
consolidated bus routes to save money, which has contributed to the
problem in several ways. Elementary school got out at 3:35, yet it
wasn't uncommon for my kids to get home an hour or more after that.
Made it tough to make dental appointments, music lessons, soccer
practice, or other pre-dinner activities on time; also makes for an
incredibly long day for a first grader. I usually preferred picking
mine up -- I worked from home then, and generally walked to school to
get them.

Also, with consolidation packing buses to capacity, the board decided
kids who were going home with a classmate (play date, to work on a
project, even being babysat by that classmate's mom) could not ride the
classmate's bus. That meant classmate's mom had to pick up the kids.

I don't like the idea, but I can understand why so many parents ended
up driving their kids.



Lori G.
Milwaukee, WI

--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
Personal page: http://www.geocities.com/cpetersky/
See the books I've set free at:
http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky

On Sat, 17 Sep 2005 12:15:13 EDT, "Claire Petersky"
wrote:

My daughter walks or rides her scooter or bike to her elementary school
every day. Because the route goes on a footpath, it's only a quarter mile;
the route by motor vehicle is four times longer. The biggest problem right
now the kids walking is all the other parents who drive. She only has one
street to cross, and of course there's crossing guards, but the parents
still do not seem to respect the pedestrians in the vicinity.

Does your school have rules or guidelines for parents who pick up
children by car? Our elementary school used to put a note in the
school newsletter once or twice a year reminding parents that if they
drove to school, they were expected to park in the parking lot and
turn off their engines due to the safety hazards of cars stopping on
the sides of the road and the health hazards of leaving engines
running. They also sometimes had teachers or bossy parents (maybe
they were members of the parent council or something?) knocking on car
windows reminding them to go park in the parking lot. Another measure
which seems to help somewhat include lobbying the municipal government
for a lowered speed limit (and police enforcement) near the school or
near a major school crossing.

Louise

"dragonlady" wrote in message
...

And that the schools were not designed to have safe drop-off/pick up
areas . . .

My kids' school is on a 45 mph winding country road with no sidewalks.
There really is no safe way for kids to walk there, even if there were
kids who lived close enough to walk.

Actually, let me take that back, there is one gravel road that goes
behind the school, and there are 2 or 3 kids who can and do walk
from there. Luckily though, they are walking across the fields and
entering through the back doors, so they are nowhere near the
road or the cars out front.

And the school seems to have handled the drop-off/pick-up
pretty well. For pick-up, you have to go in and physically
sign your child out, so you have to actually park and walk in.
For drop-off, the cars enter the school lot, loop through the
parking lot, and each one stops and lets their child out at
the door. There is a person stationed there every day to
make sure that 1) the kids cross the bus drop-off safely,
2) no cars try to drive around other cars, and 3) no one
lets their child out until they have pulled up to the drop-off
point.

There are a lot more drop-offs than pick-ups of course.
First, many working parents drop their kids in the morning,
and then the kids go to afterschool. Of course they still
need to be picked up, but it's over the course of a couple
hours, not all at once.

Bizby

Claire Petersky wrote:

My daughter walks or rides her scooter or bike to her elementary school
every day. Because the route goes on a footpath, it's only a quarter mile;
the route by motor vehicle is four times longer. The biggest problem right
now the kids walking is all the other parents who drive. She only has one
street to cross, and of course there's crossing guards, but the parents
still do not seem to respect the pedestrians in the vicinity.

Unfortunately, due to media hysteria, many parents truly believe that
if their kids are allowed out of their sight for five minutes, it's
practically a certainty that they will be kidnapped or attacked. Of
course, this results in a vicious circle because, as fewer and fewer
kids are out and about, the less safe it becomes for the remaining few
who are and, of course, it also puts added pressure on other parents to
follow suit as they don't want to be judged neglectful or reckless by
the "moral majority" (as they would style themselves).

It's counterproductive, of course, as the net effect is that each
individual child gets less and less experience of self-determination
and so are less able to judge the real risk level in any situation and
respond to it accordingly - not to mention the damage done to their
health by being denied the incidental exercise that many of us got
walking or cycling to and fro from school and from the increased
traffic and pollution levels they are exposed to.

Someone alerted me to this website: http://drivetoschoolhallofshame.com/
that has photographs from a different school, of all the chaos caused by
parents who are driving their kids to school. What is this craziness? WIWAK,
the only time you got a ride from school was when you were sick or
something.

The reason for inconsiderate driving in the vicinity of schools is
simple - a lot of (but by no means all or even most) people are lazy
and unimaginative. While these people would squeal blue murder if
anyone endangered *their* child, they do not recognise that other
people's children are worthy of the same consideration. I used to live
in the same street as a school, which was situated on a sharp bend at
the top of a very steep hill. Whenever I approached the corner, I made
sure to slow down in case any pedestrians were about but many's the
time I saw other drivers speeding round the corner, up and down the
hill (in icy conditions) and stopping/parking/reversing without a
thought for other drivers or pedestrians. You would think that, having
just dropped off their own kids, they would be acutely aware of the
safety of other children but it just didn't seem to occur to them.

Sorry if I'm ranting but it's one of my pet peeves

Cheers

Helen

In article ,
"bizby40" wrote:

"dragonlady" wrote in message
...

And that the schools were not designed to have safe drop-off/pick up
areas . . .

My kids' school is on a 45 mph winding country road with no sidewalks.
There really is no safe way for kids to walk there, even if there were
kids who lived close enough to walk.

Actually, let me take that back, there is one gravel road that goes
behind the school, and there are 2 or 3 kids who can and do walk
from there. Luckily though, they are walking across the fields and
entering through the back doors, so they are nowhere near the
road or the cars out front.

The elementary school my kids attended when we were in Massachusetts had
been designed with a "drop off/pick up" loop. There were two loops:
one for the buses, and people were not allowed in or out of that parking
lot during the beginning and end of the day, and a second for parent
pick up. It was well designed, and worked well.

However, that school opened in about 1990, and most schools here are
considerably older -- they weren't designed with the major amount of
parent driving that takes place now in mind.
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care