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 we are referring to. Our sector also has more than a couple of schools and the situation is more or less the same everywhere.
If we 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 and cars honking all around. Basically what all we learn 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 to 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. It is also seen in our sector that school buses of the schools in the vicinity are parked in front of the Jain Mandir located in our sector thus causing inconvenience to the devotees that visit the temple. 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 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 who have not yet reached the legal driving age, coming to school on two-wheelers. Many times they can be seen tripling with their schoolmates and zigzagging across traffic. Parents of such children are to be blamed for their carelessness which might not only put the life of their child at stake but also others on the road.
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 on 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 outside the schools to manage traffic, and school buses and also ensure that children can 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.
