The student parking lot is always hectic, with accidents happening almost every week. This is due to the number of young drivers in the lot and the number of students who drive themselves to and from school each day. Either way, the student parking lot is prone to frequent accidents, and changes must be made.
How can this problem be fixed? To start, at the entrance of the lot, there is only one person directing traffic. This is in the morning and the afternoon. One change that can be made is to have more adults directing traffic to avoid collisions. In the mornings, more than enough adults are directing the carpool traffic, which mainly consists of adult drivers, and has slower-moving traffic. If we implemented some of those carpool-directing adults in the student parking lot, which consists of newer, teenage drivers as well as faster-moving traffic, the amount of weekly accidents would significantly decrease.
Another thing that can be implemented is sectioned dismissal times. There could be a set time for students of different sections such as grade level or physical parking lot section to be dismissed. For example: seniors would be able to leave first at the 2:18 bell, then juniors would be permitted to leave five minutes after that, then sophomores five minutes after juniors. This system would be much more effective and efficient for not only students but traffic directors too.
Lastly, legal implications can be utilized such as a parking lot speed limit or speed bumps where students tend to speed the most. With these implications, student drivers would be legally forced to follow traffic laws, and this would ultimately decrease the amount of accidents happening in the parking lot, and around the area.
Teenage drivers don’t always make the smartest decisions. In the morning, students are tired and may not be paying full attention to their surroundings. In the afternoon, everyone just wants to beat the traffic and get home. Either way, things need to change in the student parking lot. Students and staff can work together to make a difference in making our school a safer place for student drivers.
