Overprotecting Parents

Yesterday I got a message from my daughter’s school that was asking parents to react at the refusal of VicRoads to implement a 40 km/h restriction on a street that does not pass directly around the school, but in its vicinity, and is a main road. Currently, the speed limit there is 60 km/h. Children often cross that road at a traffic light near the school, but because the road is important, there is a lot of traffic and the associated dangers. Just yesterday morning, before reading this message, I saw a car crossing on a red light at a similar pedestrian crossing, where there was no intersecting street and no red light camera. So I agree that reckless driving is a danger but it is a danger to everyone, kids or adults, at all crossings. In my opinion this has to do with the fact that the law here gives priority to cars, not to pedestrians, thus instilling a lack of respect towards everyone walking. Pedestrians have to allow the cars to pass first at the corners of secondary streets, and of course, the number of drivers who have the courtesy to let a kid cross first even around the school is extremely low. I know that from my own experience and I have been scared to step into even a very small street to cross it if a car came in the same time, as most of the time the car would be passing very fast. Too fast! Cars drive too fast in general in all suburbs on the small streets because there is no sign for speed limit, like on the main roads. So back to the message from school, I think that kids must get used to the traffic dangers in this country and their parents have to stop being overprotected to illogical extent: for roads too far from the school, traffic lights are just enough. The kids have to learn to make eye contact with the drivers of the cars, to make sure they stop on red, and have to cross in groups when possible, to be sure they are noticed. Parental overprotection made me think of two things: big city traffic and the animal world. Primary school kids in New York and other big cities cross six lanes of traffic without ANY speed limit imposed on traffic. The centipede mother in the picture Tiziano took a year ago in Wilson’s Promontory is protecting its brood of eggs with understandable dedication, because if she doesn’t lick them continuously to keep them clean, fungus kills them…