Road Safety

[henrikathehorrid]

Our local primary school has horrendous problems with parking. A lot of this is down to parents - regularly park on the yellow zig zags, engine idling, drivers speeding up and down the road to school etc.... This creates hazards for the kids leaving to and from school and denies them their independence as it's just not safe for them to walk to school without an adult any more. The school's Parent Council is trying to tackle this problem but its difficult! As this is no doubt a problem up and down the country, I wondered if anyone out there had any success stories/effective strategies on how schools/parent councils dealt with similar problems?

We have similar problems at our school and none of our 'solutions' help:

• voluntary one way system
• park only on side of the road closest to school
• weekly newsletter reminders
• free parking made available (and bookable) about 6 minutes walk away from school
• headteacher stands on road telling people off/pointing out that they are obstructing emergency vehicle access
• school meetings with neighbours

I am currently feeling inclined to make some leaflets informing people that sitting in a car with idling motor is illegal, and is poisoning their own children's air (as well as mine). Primary schools at school run times have some of the worst polluted air, for this reason. And stick those leaflets onto people's windscreens, preferably whilst they are sitting in them 'keeping warm' whilst waiting for pick up time. Or maybe I should hand out blankets (as they seem not to be able to afford any - hence needing to keep the motor running, to keep the heating on) - shaming them might work better, actually. But where to get my hands on hundreds of blankets ...

I digress. I believe what has been successful in some places is for the entire street on which the school is situated to be closed during school run hours. But that takes a lot of willing people in lots of different places, to get that done.

Also I guess it depends a bit on the nature of your school/the intake. If people come from afar, I don't think there is any way you can get them to not drive. Aiming on getting them to park away from the school is your best bet. Perhaps organise a walking bus from a car park 5 mins away? That would save people time so they might be keen.

If the 'catchment' is fairly small and generally walkable (I do get that some people will always have good reasons for driving, but not the numbers we have now), lots of measures that make walking/cycling to school safer/quicker/more pleasurable, and other measures that make driving to school slower/annoying/uncomfortable, might encourage some people to switch.
Let's see (just throwing some ideas around):

• Close one lane of the road for car traffic during school run times, dedicating the closed lane to bicycles and scooters. Achieves both aims of slowing down cars and making walking safer.
• Get some 'lollipop ladies' whose job it is to give children/pedestrians first priority always, even if it means making a long row of cars wait, and slow down motorised traffic.
• School rewards children who walked to school, in a way that makes them at least try to convince their parents. I am not usually in favour of rewarding something the child cannot help e.g. attendance, but at least some children might indeed be able to influence their parents on this point, if they knew they could earn themselves a lovely priviledge at school...

Best thing we've found is the Head stood at the school gates administering death stares to any parents driving like pillocks - but obviously resource/death-staring headteacher dependent.

We also have had double yellows extended to stop parking like wankers on junctions, and bollards installed to stop parking like wankers on pavements but it's still a bloody nightmare.

Our school spent years asking the council for road safety measures.
Parking is a nightmare, cars race past the school, cars doing u turn right outside school gates, cars cutting the corner and driving on the path.

Asked for a crossing and told there hasn't been enough accidents or a serious accident...so basically we need a child to be knocked over before they will give us a crossing.

After years of campaigning we got a speed reduction sign... in use at school drop off and pick up (not lunchtime pick up though)

Train up year 6s as mini traffic wardens.
They might be able to shame parents where adults can't?

Ask the council to put parking restrictions in place or residents parking only, and then enforce?

Some great ideas thank you. Seems our school is not the only one affected. I do want to moot the idea of rewarding children who walk to school but can only imagine the backlash as it won't suit everyone....

We do the stickers for walk to school week. All that happened with the "walk, bike or scoot to school" was that certain parents drove to school and then got the scooter out of the car boot to scoot in the gates and claim the stickers. (That parent's a right fucking cheeky cow anyway though)

The most successful thing we've found working is encouraging parents to use a nearby carpark and walk the 5 minutes into school from there - doesn't have a massive uptake (especially when it's crap weather) but at least some of the more conscientious parents do it.

Thanks I think another school nearby has done that I will suggest...Behaviours like you describe hexagonal that make me lose my faith in humanity