Inconsiderate drivers and kids who walk to school

In . com,
shinypenny wrote:

*I went to the URL you posted, and just one nit: not all states have a
*yield to pedestrian rule. In PA (at least when I lived there years ago)
*pedestrians must yield to traffic. Where I live now we do have a yield
*to pedestrian rule. When I first moved here, it took me a long while to
*get used to that. :-)

That was not true when I got my PA drivers' license in 1986, and it is
still not true.

From the PA state drivers' manual:

-Yield to pedestrians crossing at intersections or in crosswalks.
-When approaching a stopped car from behind, slow down, and do not pass
until you are sure there are no pedestrians crossing in front of it.
-Right turn on red means STOP, LOOK in all directions, and then turn when
it is safe. Look for pedestrians, and allow ample time for them to clear
the crosswalk.
-Be extra attentive when driving at night or durin gother periods of
reduced visibility. Keep your windows fog and frost free. Even with good
visibility, pedestrians are less conspicuous than vehicles.
-Always reduce speed when passing children. You must observe school zone
speed limits and stop for school buses when red signals are flashing.
-Be patient with elderly pedestrians. Usually they need extra time to
cross a street.
-Before backing, always check for pedestrians in your path.
-Be especially considerate to pedestrians with disabilities.
-Yield the right-of-way (stop if necessary) to blind pedestrians, whether
they have a white cane or a dog or are led by others.

http://www.dot10.state.pa.us/pdotfor...section_10.pdf

--
Hillary Israeli, VMD
Lafayette Hill/PA/USA/Earth
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it is
too dark to read." --Groucho Marx

In article , Louise says...

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.

I'd wager these are parents who had taken the steps to park in the lot, turn off
their engines, and walk with their children to school, and aren't very happy to
see their efforts mocked by that ubiquitous plurality of people who can't see
past their noses and just do what they darn well please. Eventually
undermining the whole effort.

How does that make them "bossy"?

Banty

Hillary Israeli wrote:
In . com,
shinypenny wrote:

*I went to the URL you posted, and just one nit: not all states have a
*yield to pedestrian rule. In PA (at least when I lived there years ago)
*pedestrians must yield to traffic. Where I live now we do have a yield
*to pedestrian rule. When I first moved here, it took me a long while to
*get used to that. :-)

That was not true when I got my PA drivers' license in 1986, and it is
still not true.

From the PA state drivers' manual:

-Yield to pedestrians crossing at intersections or in crosswalks.
-When approaching a stopped car from behind, slow down, and do not pass
until you are sure there are no pedestrians crossing in front of it.
-Right turn on red means STOP, LOOK in all directions, and then turn when
it is safe. Look for pedestrians, and allow ample time for them to clear
the crosswalk.
-Be extra attentive when driving at night or durin gother periods of
reduced visibility. Keep your windows fog and frost free. Even with good
visibility, pedestrians are less conspicuous than vehicles.
-Always reduce speed when passing children. You must observe school zone
speed limits and stop for school buses when red signals are flashing.
-Be patient with elderly pedestrians. Usually they need extra time to
cross a street.
-Before backing, always check for pedestrians in your path.
-Be especially considerate to pedestrians with disabilities.
-Yield the right-of-way (stop if necessary) to blind pedestrians, whether
they have a white cane or a dog or are led by others.

http://www.dot10.state.pa.us/pdotfor...section_10.pdf

--
Hillary Israeli, VMD

That's incredibly bizarre! I got my license in PA in 1982, and I don't
remember anything like this in the manual I studied. And when I went to
college in PA and there was no such rule, or at least it sure *seemed*
there wasn't!! It was annoying because as a pedestrian you pretty much
took your own life in your hands, since cars would not stop... it would
take a mass of pedestrians moving together across the walk, before the
cars would bother to stop. And then, it was a rolling stop... all this,
in a college town with lots of pedestrians.

I always laugh when people say that Boston drivers are the worse.
Philly drivers are FAR worse than any driver I've seen around here in
MA! LOL! Just take a cruise on the Sure-Kill... ;-)

jen

Jeanne wrote:

I think, for some reason, people think it's unsafe for children to be
riding the bus or walking so they end up chauffeuring their children to
school. I'm not talking about working parents who drop off their
children at the school's before-care or students whose neighborhoods
lack sidewalks - these are cases where parents need to drive their children.

The deal here, where our buses are half-filled, is that you have to pay
$225/child for a bus pass for bus stops within 2 miles of the school
for K-5, and $225/child for a bus pass for 6-12, regardless of distance
from the school. For a lot of folks, that $225 (or $550, or higher)
works out to make driving a more economical choice, especially if they
live 2+ miles from school and have multiple children in grades 6-12.

There are no sidewalks here, and we're at 1.97 miles, so we pay for the
bus. I keep thinking that I'll start walking my DD (1st grader), but
realized that this would be 8 miles/day with her younger sibling in a
stroller, and it wouldn't be do-able in the winter (the stroller, that
is). So for now she's a schoolbus rider. If I had multiple children in
the elementary grades, though, it'd require some hard thought about the
cost of the bus, the hassle of walking, and the financial outlay.

Out of curiousity, are public school busses 'free' (included in the
cost of the school versus paid for like an activity) there?

Caledonia

Caledonia wrote:

Out of curiousity, are public school busses 'free' (included in the
cost of the school versus paid for like an activity) there?

Bus transportation is provided at no cost here
(Virginia). We actually live within walking distance,
but have a bus stop due to traffic flow issues. My
kids ride the bus, though we'll sometimes walk if it's
nice out. They're old enough to go to the bus stop
by themselves, but frankly, the bus stop is a nice
way to touch base with the other parents, so I drop
by on occasion just to say hi. They're last on/first
off, so they have a rather short bus ride. I only
do pick up/drop off if I need to do that in order to
make an appointment, but we have a nice kiss'n'ride
loop that is well patrolled. There are still the
occasional people who won't get off their cell phones
in line, but they run a pretty tight ship in general.
I'm still debating if I'm going to drive on band days.
It depends on how heavy and awkward DS1's instruments
are for schlepping on and off the bus. If they're
doing chess club, I'll have to pick up on Wednesdays
anyway, and I'll have to be dressed and moving in the
morning anyway to get DD to dance, so it won't be
much skin off my nose to drive if it spares him from
arriving black and blue ;-)

Best wishes,
Ericka

On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 21:28:57 EDT, "Caledonia"
wrote:

Out of curiousity, are public school busses 'free' (included in the
cost of the school versus paid for like an activity) there?

They are paid for from the general budget (taxes) for the four
publicly-funded systems of school boards in Ontario, Canada. (English
and French for each of Roman Catholic and secular)

Louise

Cathy Kearns wrote:

The survey showed me that parent prefer to drive their kids to school, and
nothing we can do will change their minds.

I suspect part of the reason might have to do with so many more moms
working, and also the fact that every household now typically has one
car per adult.

When my kids were little, I think one major reason I wouldn't want them
to walk is that I would want to know that they arrived safely and were
at school. Since they didn't have cellphones, there wasn't any easy way
for me to know.

The other option would have been for me to walk with them, but that
wasn't feasible. It would have been 15 minutes to one school, then
another 15 minutes to the next school, and then a 20-30 minute walk
back to work -- all in my professional clothes. As it was, it was 20
minutes from leaving home to being at work. Even though I chose both
the schools and the apartment to be walking distance from each other
and from work, it just was not doable in the mornings.

And backpack weight is definitely a factor - even as early as 3rd and
4th grade.

Rupa

On Sun, 18 Sep 2005 21:28:57 EDT, "Caledonia"
wrote:

[...]

The deal here, where our buses are half-filled, is that you have to pay
$225/child for a bus pass for bus stops within 2 miles of the school
for K-5, and $225/child for a bus pass for 6-12, regardless of distance
from the school. For a lot of folks, that $225 (or $550, or higher)
works out to make driving a more economical choice, especially if they
live 2+ miles from school and have multiple children in grades 6-12.


[...]

Out of curiousity, are public school busses 'free' (included in the
cost of the school versus paid for like an activity) there?


I'm flabbergasted. I have never heard of fee-for-school bus before.

Here (suburban Indianapolis) there is no separate fee for school bus
service. In our previous residence (Rochester, NY) there also was no
fee. Moreover, in NY (but not in Indiana) the local school district
was also obligated to bus your kid even if she attended a private
school (within a certain distance).

Nick


--
Nick Theodorakis

contact form:
http://theodorakis.net/contact.html

Caledonia wrote:


The deal here, where our buses are half-filled, is that you have to pay
$225/child for a bus pass for bus stops within 2 miles of the school
for K-5, and $225/child for a bus pass for 6-12, regardless of distance
from the school. For a lot of folks, that $225 (or $550, or higher)
works out to make driving a more economical choice, especially if they
live 2+ miles from school and have multiple children in grades 6-12.

There are no sidewalks here, and we're at 1.97 miles, so we pay for the
bus. I keep thinking that I'll start walking my DD (1st grader), but
realized that this would be 8 miles/day with her younger sibling in a
stroller, and it wouldn't be do-able in the winter (the stroller, that
is). So for now she's a schoolbus rider. If I had multiple children in
the elementary grades, though, it'd require some hard thought about the
cost of the bus, the hassle of walking, and the financial outlay.

Out of curiousity, are public school busses 'free' (included in the
cost of the school versus paid for like an activity) there?

Caledonia


Wow. I live in Maryland and public school bus rides are free - no bus
fee (yet).

Jeanne

Claire Petersky wrote:

but the parents still do not seem to respect the
pedestrians in the vicinity.


Isn't it crazy! My husband has actually called the cops on a parent who
*passed* him and went speeding by to drop her kid off in front of my dh. It
was right in front of the school. Little kids were walking everywhere. I
would have reported another car (no idea if it was a parent) that went about
35 miles an hour past the school during drop off's but I was unprepared.
Again small kids walking all over the place. Since that day I keep a
notebook and pen to get plate numbers. The road itself is residential and
has a 20mph speed limit even with no school in session.

My school has a very lame set up for drop off's and pick ups which
exacerbates the problem. You just park along the street. The problem is
parents come early and just sit there and wait for the bell to ring before
their kids get out. They take up all the space. I often have to park a bit
away and then walk my kid to the fence because nobody is dropping off and
moving on, just parked. Grr.
--
Nikki
Hunter 4/99
Luke 4/01
EDD 4/06