If you are ever wondering past a school in Queensland and you hear someone yelling out of their car window, "use the school crossing – don't be lazy!" That's probably me…
I'm sick to death of seeing high school students playing chicken with my 4×4 because one day instead of me it will be a parent texting on their phone (probably a millennial) and the kids won't be as lucky.
I know my first post in this series of Frustrations of a Home Dad was traffic-related but I had to double down after this incident and follow up with this one.
Today, I was driving our boys to school and was forced to come to a controlled stop as two high school students blatantly walked across the road in front of me. No pedestrian crossing, no school crossing, no nothing, just a straight thoroughfare running past the school and they crossed the road forcing a car to STOP without even flinching. In fact, they didn't even look up to acknowledge me. My two boys sitting in the back seat of my truck were stunned! All I could do was smile, shake my head and say to my children, "are they on drugs or something?"
That's what it seemed like to me – drugs – because they didn't look right or left before stepping onto the road and they moseyed across slower than two old jersey cows coming into the dairy at milking time. I was so amazed at their lack of self-awareness (or arrogance) that I couldn't be bothered to wind down my window and give them a spray of my mind as I knew it would be fruitless.
Along this straight strip of public roadway, there are two children's crossings within 100 metres of each other. One is controlled and the other crossing is uncontrolled (ie no lollypop person) but vehicles still should stop for waiting pedestrians.
These two brainiacs, a boy and a girl, decided to cross a mear 20 metres away from the uncontrolled crossing and then I watched them walk across the busway and cross the road again about 5 metres away from a pedestrian crossing leading into the school front gates. It was like they deliberately avoided any safe areas and instead did their best to get run over.
As far as the law goes, if these kids did get run over it would be their fault not the driver of the vehicle (unless the driver was breaking other laws like speeding or drink driving) so forget about claiming medical costs – their parents would be up for some serious medical bills. All for the sake of not walking a few extra metres to cross the road/s at the appropriate place.
I'm not sure what worried me the most about this incident – the safety aspects, or, their sheer dismissal and entitlement as they strolled across the road in front of me knowing full well what they were doing was wrong.
Honestly, I doubt they were affected by any type of drug. I just hope they are misguided kids who made an error of judgement and will mature into good people, rather than, turn into bad young adults confused as to why they can't hold down a full-time job.
This short post was #2 in my Frustrations of a Home Dad series check out our Parenting section for similar articles or use our search bar for matching keywords like this.
