Road Hazards

A white van pulled up to the corner in an illegal space in front of Kester Avenue School in Van Nuys at 7:40 on a recent morning, and a child jumped out.

“Passenger exiting vehicle,” traffic enforcement Officer Tony Yancey said as he trained his video camera on the scene unfolding 100 yards up the block. “No stop, tow-away.”

Yancey zoomed in on the license plate number. Within two weeks, the driver will receive a $60 ticket in the mail.

School district, safety and law enforcement officials say the traffic problem is another side effect of overcrowded schools. To ease the congestion, exasperated school officials are devising innovative ways to curb the maneuvers of impatient, discourteous or time-challenged parents during the morning drop-off.

In Los Angeles, the city Department of Transportation has formed a unit to film renegade drivers. It has been called out to 67 schools across the sprawling district and has issued hundreds of citations. But when traffic officers, volunteers or teachers try to intervene, tempers flare and curses fly.

“If I’m not standing right there--and even if I am right there--parents double-park, park on the opposite side of the street and send their kids running across,” said Principal Sandra McGuern of Cantara Street School in Reseda, who called in the video team this month as a last resort. “This morning I had this one--my mouth was agape--they did not even come to a complete stop. They just slowed down and the kid jumped out.”

Drive by most any school in Southern California minutes before the morning bell, and chaos reigns. Parents double-park, empty cars are left running at the curb, small children dart between cars to cross the street, and harried parents honk their horns.

Officials say traffic hazards outside schools are a growing problem, underscored Tuesday when a crossing guard was struck and killed by a teenage motorist outside a North Hollywood elementary school after the driver dropped off his younger brother at nearby Walter Reed Middle School.

“When school starts at 8, a thousand students converge on one site in a 10-minute window,” said Donald Zimring, deputy superintendent of the Las Virgenes School District in Calabasas. “There is nothing you can do to make it good. Parents gladly stand in line for three hours to go on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland, but they can’t wait six minutes to drop their kid off at school.”

School Traffic Safety a Widespread Problem

Agencies and officials across Los Angeles County were unable to provide statistics on how many students are hit each year near schools. But at least two children have been hit in the San Fernando Valley so far this school year, according to Officer Norman Kellems of the Los Angeles Police Department’s Traffic Safety Unit.

Robert Yalda, director of transportation and intergovernmental relations for the city of Calabasas, said schools in the Las Virgenes School District average a half dozen accidents annually, ranging from fender benders to student injuries.

Car crashes involving child pedestrians are the second-leading cause of death for children ages 5 to 14, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Each year, an average of 675 children die from motor-vehicle-related pedestrian injuries, and 20,000 more are injured.

Orange County drivers are among the worst offenders in the nation when it comes to driving irresponsibly in school zones, according to a survey released last month by the National Safe Kids Campaign, a child safety advocacy group.

The study found that while 65% of motorists nationwide drive 5 mph over the posted speed limit in school zones, 87% of those in Orange County speed near schools.

The principal of a Santa Ana school called police Wednesday after more than a dozen drivers ignored the crossing guard and zoomed through the crosswalk as children were headed across the street.

“They just speed through when there’s people in the crosswalk, even though there’s the crossing guard with a yellow jacket and a huge red stop sign,” said Kathy Roe, principal of Rosita Elementary School.

The crossing guard was able to jot down license plate numbers of 14 cars.

In the city of Los Angeles, small neighborhood elementary schools were built 50 years ago to serve one-half to one-third the number of students now enrolled. Portable classrooms sit on what were once school parking lots. Many older schools are surrounded by narrow residential streets not designed to handle large volumes of traffic and ever-larger SUVs and minivans.

“They were thinking of small, local community schools,” said Principal Susan Fein of Bassett Street School in Reseda. “They were not thinking these would become multitrack, year-round schools.”

Society has changed in other ways, too. Thirty years ago, according to researchers at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, more than two-thirds of American children walked to school. Today, less than 10% do so.

In addition, more parents are working, meaning they are operating on tight schedules, juggling coffee cups and cell phones as they swing by school in the morning to eject their children, school officials say.

Even at new schools in less urban areas, traffic is a problem. New Park Elementary School in Valencia opened just a year and a half ago with a large circular driveway. Principal Catherine Laws said the school placed cones at both ends of the driveway to block traffic, but parents just drove over them, narrowly missing several students and teachers. The school ended up erecting gates that are closed during pickup and drop-off times.

“Gates are more effective,” Laws said. “Parents can’t run through them because they are metal.”

Programs aimed to ease the traffic tie-ups range from coercive to creative.

“We found from experience that citation is the best educational tool,” said Lt. Linda Browne, who heads the video enforcement program for the Los Angeles Department of Transportation.

So-called valet programs have been introduced at about 17 schools throughout the city, said Joe Nardulli, coordinator for the Los Angeles Unified School District’s traffic and safety education unit.

At Bassett Street School in Reseda one morning this week, five parent volunteers in orange neon baseball caps stood along the curb as parents filed into a cone-bordered chute. The “valets” opened the passenger doors to help students unload, then waved parents on.

In Calabasas, a traffic safety committee made up of representatives from City Hall, the Sheriff’s Department and other agencies was created and the city promoted a “Walk to School Program,” dispensing maps and routes to encourage children to walk or ride bikes. They were rewarded with $20 bills, bookstore gift certificates and free bicycles.

Children who walk to school are called “Walking Warriors,” or “Traffic Busters.” If they arrive 20 minutes before school starts 20 times in a month, they earn a badge designed like the “Ghostbusters” logo.

Yalda even posted signs banning cellular phone use around elementary schools.

Several Ventura County schools have tried the airport technique--designating loading and unloading zones. Both before and after school, principals stand on the curb and repeat the “No Parking” mantra over and over. But even when zones are clearly marked, many parents ignore them.

At Meiners Oaks Elementary School in Ojai, secretary Sue Foster said the situation gets out of control some days. “Parents are certainly not polite,” she said. “Everyone is in a hurry, and everyone needs to go first.”

Parents’ erratic driving puts the crossing guard at risk every day, Foster said. “She is not a hood ornament or a bumper protector, but sometimes she feels like one.”

Incident Prompted Anti-Rudeness Policy

Two years ago, an incident involving an out-of-control driver prompted the Capistrano Unified School District in south Orange County to pass an anti-rudeness policy.

At Del Obispo Elementary School in San Juan Capistrano, then-Principal John Allen was directing after-school traffic when a pickup speeding in the parking lot headed toward children in the crosswalk. He tried to stop the vehicle, but the driver leaned out the window and yelled at Allen--who was ushering students across the crosswalk--to get out of the way.

When Allen warned the driver of the 5-mph speed limit, the driver got out and threatened to beat him up. The driver then sped through the crosswalk, brushing a teacher holding a stop sign and setting her spinning. The driver received three years’ probation, Allen said.

Back at Kester in Van Nuys, video-toting Officer Yancey drew mixed reactions from parents, but neighborhood resident Elaine Goss was thrilled.

“We’ve had crazy maniac parents, the whole nine yards,” said Goss, who was walking her dog. “When these guys are dropping off their kids, I just pick [the dog] up and run. These guys, if they are in a hurry and they have to get to work, there is no stopping them.”

Just then, the man driving the white van pulled up, jumped out and strode toward Yancey.

“So am I going to get a ticket for that?” said Don Bengert before breaking into a torrent of expletives. “Take me off. I was there for one second. I like to give my daughter a hug. I was dropping my daughter off in the appropriate spot.”

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Times staff writers Anna Gorman, David Pierson and Erica Hayasaki and correspondent Theresa Moreau contributed to this story.