Is Your School Parking Lot Safe?

Wednesday morning an incident happened in our preschool parking lot that struck fear in every parent that witnessed or heard about it. As I was taking Top Gun into the building I heard a shriek and turned around to see one of the parents from our neighborhood helping her son off the pavement and a white minivan near them. The minivan driver had backed into her son. Fortunately the boy is okay, and the driver was going slow enough that the child had no injuries, but all who witnessed the incident were horrified.

It's hard to back up a minivan or SUV or other tall cars because you can't see anything below the rear mirror, which sits up pretty high. Many cars now come equipped with rear sensors and/or a camera so the driver can see what's behind them, but without such devices drivers have to check before backing and hope that anyone nearby stays out of the way. We've had a couple near misses with other cars in the parking lot because either the other driver or I couldn't see everything behind the car.

After the incident there were pockets of people in the halls and the parking lot discussing the incident, and we talked about the problems with backing up and speeding. Everyone morning as I drop off my son I see drivers speeding in and out of the parking lot, on their way to their next destination and it makes me angry. The lot is small and going fast is dangerous with so many people in the lot, especially the young children who tend to dart about and not look out for cars on the move. I'm sure the man was very sorry for backing into the boy, but the incident just reinforced the need for more caution and many parents seemed to drive a little more cautiously as they left.

Now I'm off to research rear sensors and a wireless backup cameras for our minivan.

Original DC Metro Moms Blog Post

Andrea writes about her adventures in the kitchen at Andrea's Recipes and gives her opinion on home and garden products at Andrea's Reviews.