Children and classrooms are being reunited this week. Sure, kids will be wearing masks. True, they’ll be washing their hands. Yes, they or their parents and guardians will have to answer COVID-19 questionnaires to gain entry, but they’ll be inside on chairs with desks. There’ll be teachers and recess and everything.
Back to school means back to seeing awful driving in school zones, and unsurprisingly, parents are apprehensive. In a recent poll conducted by Chevrolet along with analytics company Harris Poll, almost 70 per cent of Americans surveyed were concerned about drop-offs and pickups. Seventy-eight per cent said drivers were less safe than before the pandemic and almost 50 per cent felt that COVID-19 had hampered teen drivers from developing sufficient driving skills.
Their concern is understandable. Lockdowns meant teens (and everyone else) could get their licenses, but they did not get experience driving on the roads as they are under normal, busy circumstances. Insufficiently skilled teen drivers are a real issue.
Unfortunately, when it comes to school zones and driving, there are much more frightening dangers to worry about – mainly hyped-up parents driving through school zones like maniacs.
One of the best things about COVID-19 was the absence of stories about mothers and fathers trying to win the Indy 500 while they dropped their offspring at kindergarten. No school meant no NASCAR enthusiasts making sure little Johnny wasn’t late for the Grade One “Trauma and Memory in Literature” class. Instead, you saw kids cycling, playing touch football or tag and having fun.
Well, those days are over.
April may be the cruellest month but September is by far the most dangerous, according to Transport Canada.
A 2019 study by CAA found that 50 per cent of Canadians have seen distracted driving in a school zone, 25 per cent have seen a school zone “near miss” and 60 per cent think school zones have become more dangerous. Seventy per cent have seen speeding. School zones are in the top three places to find speeding, illegal parking and stopping and distracted driving. In British Columbia, according to a BCAA study, 80 per cent of respondents had witnessed failure to stop at crosswalks, speeding and distracted driving.
What’s to be done?
Honestly, you don’t have to have aced the Grade Three “Ethics and Moral Theory” course to answer this one.
Problem: Cars are accidentally hitting human beings in school zones.
Answer: Stop driving cars in school zones.
That’s the solution. Walk your kids to school. Teach them how to walk themselves to school. Teach them how to bike to school safely. We’re already on that road in some places. For instance, a 2020 survey commissioned by Parachute, Canada’s national charity dedicated to injury prevention, found that one-third of Ontarian students walked to school.
To be fair, not every parent can take the time to walk their young kids to school. They have jobs and responsibilities that simply prevent it. The rest do not have this excuse – especially in this pandemic-altered reality. Many office workers are not going back into their cubicle cages full-time. Flexibility is the word of the moment.
Now is the time for employers to implement permanent flexibility for parents with young kids so that these parents can walk their kids to school. As a society, we’ll all benefit. A pleasant walk is a lot more beneficial – both for exercise and bonding between parent and child – than a hurried car ride.
Look, we’re going through COVID-19 hell (still). We may as well see some benefits. Put down the keys. Pick up an umbrella. “Love the child who holds your hand,” as it says in the epic poem Gilgamesh (written c. 2150 – 1400 BCE). Get walking.
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