There is apparently a phenomenon in the US now, where parents drive to the school individually to pick up and drop off their children at the beginning and end of the day. Some people I work with even take time off from working to do this. When the parents descend on the school each day there’s insane traffic, cars lined up for miles, all idling their engines. What happened to school buses?
I grew up with this culture, unfortunately, never rode a school bus or saw one.
And yea, it is complete trash. Let’s put tiny vulnerable road-unintelligent children, all running around, in the same place as a bunch of stressed out parents driving cars while mostly thinking about work or not being late for work.
What could go wrong!
Shit … let’s reduce the speed limit drastically to prevent accidents! Ok, now it’s just a big fat traffic Jam! Shit … let’s build specialised roads within the school to increase the speed of drop off. Ok … now we’ve lost some of our school grounds and it’s marginally better … except everyone’s driving tanks/four-wheel-drives now so it’s pretty dangerous for kids still! Shit lets …
Seen all of that. It’s really really dumb and stressful for kids and parents alike.