The Whiteboard Jungle: Reckless driving around schools is more than a troubling concern
Against my better judgment, I recently watched “Mad Max: Fury Road,” curious how a high-octane action film could earn 10 Academy Award nominations including Best Picture. The only thing I got out of the film was recognizing a connection between its subtitle and a line from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”: “full of sound and fury signifying nothing.”
I also thought about the real “fury road” that surrounds schools with maniacal drivers breaking every vehicle code in the book in order to get Johnny and Jane to class on time.
Double-parking, stopping in red zones, parking in front of other people’s driveways, making illegal U-turns, using “hands-full” phones, and barely missing pedestrians are some of the regular hazardous actions on display.
Reckless driving, in general, is a public nuisance, but when it occurs around schools, it is more than troubling. It is deadly.
“More children die as a result of motor-vehicle incidents than from any disease… a fourth of these deaths as young pedestrians” as stated in the American Automobile Assn.’s brochure on traffic safety.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, more than 800 students are killed each year as they travel between school and home. And more than 150,000 are injured annually.
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It isn’t amazing how many accidents and violations occur. What’s amazing is that there aren’t more of them.
Parents wait too late when leaving the house, endangering other people’s children as they race their eight-seat SUV 40 mph down residential streets, intent on ensuring their child is within 10 yards of the front entrance — no blinkers necessary.
Add to the mix kids walking with their eyes frozen on their cellphones and disaster is bound to happen. Just as adults should drive defensively, kids need to practice defensive walking.
Schools employ city crossing guards, student volunteers as valets and administrators as traffic cops. Several robocalls are placed, pleading with parents to drive more safely.
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It is hard to miss that one is driving near a school zone with the amount of signage and road markings that begin to appear blocks from the school. Yet many drivers ignore them, just as many ignore stop signs and red lights.
For example, on Kenneth Road in Glendale between Irving and Allen avenues, there is a “slow school” crossing painted on the roadway along with two marked crosswalks, four neon yellow pedestrian signs posted and one “yield to pedestrian” sign — on both sides of the block. And Balboa Elementary is one block above this area.
Even when schools go to the trouble of arranging for special drop-off zones, some parents bypass them, improvising jump-out spots.
At the school where I work, I learned long ago to arrive early. Otherwise, I’m caught in a queue of cars, drivers who think nothing of blocking teachers from entering the faculty parking lot regardless if there’s a place to pull over 15 feet away.
Burbank Unified School District is currently polling parents online about starting school later at 8:30 a.m. or 9 a.m. If schools stagger the start times between an elementary, middle and high school in a region, then parents are less likely to rush from one school to another.
Elementary schools already have different start times for different grade levels. At Jefferson Elementary in Burbank, kindergartners begin at either 8 a.m. or 9:15 a.m., first- and second-graders start at either 8:25 a.m. or 9:10 a.m., and third-, fourth- and fifth-graders begin at 8:30 a.m. This reduces traffic congestion and enhances child safety.
Let’s be clear: there are many law-abiding parents who do the right thing. But there are too many who don’t.
Sometimes we forget that we don’t live in a “hood” but a neighborhood.
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BRIAN CROSBY is a teacher in the Glendale Unified School District and the author of “Smart Kids, Bad Schools” and “The $100,000 Teacher.” He can be reached at briancrosby.org.
