Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Public School Drop-Off

I've been reminded of another reason I am so glad I homeschool:  Pick-up and Drop-off!

My neighbor needs me to drop off her son at the public school once or twice a week.  It is such a nightmare.  Every time I fear for my life and for the lives of the children I see running around traffic.  This school seems to be particularly bad. 
I've included a (maybe) helpful drawing of the drive way in front of the school.  As you can see, the first 2 car widths directly in front of the building are blocked off to be used for buses only.  Then the rest of the driveway (to the left of the buses) is about 3 car widths.  But it has no lanes painted.
So what most people do is drive up one of those "lanes" and then just stop the car whenever they feel like it and let their kid out of the car to walk across (albeit slow-moving) traffic to get to the safety of the sidewalk.  Or, even weirder, though possibly safer, is people will just stop and then turn off their engine and walk their kids up.  People will be gone for several minutes while their car just sits parked in the middle of the driveway. 
So you have lots of cars maneuvering around each other, trying to avoid parked cars and pedestrians.  It gives me an anxiety attack just thinking about it! 
What I always do is pull all the way to the right, against the sidewalk and go right in front of the bus area.  I probably shouldn't be there, considering then I would be in the way of any buses coming through.  But it feels the safest for my neighbor's kid.  But then after he gets out, I have to drive over 3 or more lanes to get out!

1 comment:

  1. When Boom was in Jr. High, it was a running joke around our house of who "wanted to take their life in their hands", which meant, "who wants to go and pick up the baby." I remember how scary it was to even drive down the street that the school was parked on! Sadly, they won't do anything about it until someone is hurt.

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