Ian Filer
Now that I have your attention, I simply ask all parents and all students to cross Highet Avenue at the school crossing. On Wednesday of last week, a student rushed across the road in her desire to get to school and her class quickly-but without looking. She was struck by the side of a slow moving vehicle, dropped to the ground and needed support to move safely to the footpath. A subsequence ambulance visit and admission to Flinders Hospital determined that her injuries were minor, apart from the obvious shock. She has since returned to school. The driver of the vehicle was badly shaken and obviously in shock -it was distressing to see both the child and the driver in such a state.
As expected, Police were involved and undertook a thorough investigation with no charges laid expect for the obvious. LOOK BOTH WAYS BEFORE CROSSING AND USE THE PEDESTRIAN CROSSING on Highet avenue.
On Tuesday morning of this week I undertook the teacher duty on the Highet Avenue crossing, assisting two year 7 monitors to manage the traffic flow, allowing students and adults to cross safely coming to school. It was a nightmare. I witnessed many students and adults crossing Highet Avenue within 20 metres of the crossing but not using it, two cars stop on Highet Avenue (in front of the school carpark) and allowing their children to get out as if the road was a ‘kiss and drop’ (it is not!) and one car heading west, attempt a 5 point turn right in front of the crossing.
Matters were complicated by a large truck exiting the school, but it is times like this that accidents happen!
Please teach your children good road manners and for goodness sake, model them yourselves.
Ian
We are very fortunate as a school community that this incident was not worse.
It is surprising to me however that the problems in Highet Avenue are being viewed as something new. Whilst the reopening of carparks in the sporting grounds and the widening of the road has alleviated some of the congestion problems the blatant disregard shown by many within our school community astounds me every single morning.
The number of parents who like Ian has mentioned use the space in front of the school carpark as a defacto kiss and drop spot or even more commonly at the end of the alley near the fasta pasta carpark is staggering to me. The self entitlement shown by these parents who are not only happy to block traffic whilst the children unsafely exit the vehicle but also will often wait to make sure their children have entered the school grounds safely is appalling.
As a short term measure senior school staff should be actively policing both of these drop zones. Yellow lines on the road DO NOT have any impact on their actions and active deterrence is the ONLY way this situation is going to improve. Longer term the school community desperately needs to allocate funding for a true kiss and drop zone that is actively managed. Everyone has limited time in the morning but actively endangering children’s lives should not be a solution and a viable alternative needs to be enacted before we as a community are actively mourning a more serious outcome.
There are a number of issues at the crossing of Brighton Road too (from Woolworths), Ian. Primarily the Year 6/7 students crossing recklessly on their skateboards, scooters and bicycles and quite often nearly knocking down the smaller kids.
Thank you Katrina-this has been brought to my attention by a member of staff (thanks to you) and the LA5 and LA 6 communities are addressing this critical safety issue.Ian