A lesson Learnt in School Forgot Outside It
Safety First, we have all learnt this in our schools but ironically today the place where this important lesson of life is blatantly ignored is just outside schools. If you were to stand outside any school especially during the afternoon when the schools break for the day and the children disperse, you would understand what I’m referring to. Our sector also has a couple of play schools and a regular school and the situation is more or less the same everywhere.
If I were to describe a typical visual outside most schools during closing hours it would consist of a road choked with haphazardly parked cars, school buses taking up more than half of the road space, children running between traffic, young boys in school uniforms below the legal driving age zooming past on their two wheelers sometimes with two more children riding pillion and cars honking all around. Basically what all we learnt in school goes out the window just outside it. The same people who try to teach their kids about road manners park their cars wherever they can and walk till the school gate to receive their ward unmindful of the fact that their car is blocking someone else’s vehicle or the flow of traffic. They are unmoved by the inconvenience being faced by others. Similar is the case with school buses. Most schools do not have space inside their compounds to accommodate all the school buses engaged to ferry the children. As a result they are parked on the road sometimes in double files and end up blocking more than half of the road space. If at all in some cases the buses are parked inside the schools, they tend to block the flow of traffic while moving in and out of the school gates. School children in a bid to reach their buses or waiting cars tend to blindly run across the road dangerously dodging moving traffic. In many cases it has also been observed that parents who accompany very small children tend to be careless and do not hold the hand of their child. As a result in some cases small children tend to suddenly run here and there and risk getting hurt from the moving vehicles. One major aspect that is seen nowadays is young boys that have not yet reached the legal driving age, coming to school on two wheelers. Many a times they can be seen tripling with their schoolmates and zigzagging across traffic. Parents of such children are to be blamed for their carelessness that might not only out the life of their child at stake but also others on the road. Recently the Noida Traffic Police launched a special drive to educate and punish such erring parents that let their underage children ride two wheelers but that doesn’t seem to have ruffled any feathers as the situation remains the same.
Now who is to blame for the above? The School authorities, the parents, or the city administration? The answer is all of them. The parents must be mindful that they do not cause any inconvenience to others on account of their wrongly parked vehicles, they must educate their children of the importance of road safety and how to act while crossing the road etc. Parents must also be strict about not letting their underage children ride two wheelers. The School authorities must ensure that they deploy traffic marshals out the schools to manage traffic, school buses and also ensure that children are able to cross the road safely. Lastly the local administration and police must hold regular awareness drives to educate both children and their parents about proper safety etiquette outside schools and must penalise erring parents and schools.
