This item appeared on my newsfeed. It’s a story about pupils from a Leeds school taking part in a protest about speed (whilst simultaneously trying to set a world record for the Biggest Walking Bus – go figure the logic here)..
Now, don’t get me wrong. Speeding is absolutely wrong, and if someone speeds and causes an accident or injury then they deserve to be locked up for a long time and never allowed to drive again.
But let’s just look at something here and try to stay in touch with reality. Julie Townsend, of Brake, says:
You never know when a child might make a mistake and run out. Your slower driving could save their life.
What this does is create a cosy little image of a Utopian society, where parents all bring up well-behaved and well-balanced children, who always take care near roads, but who – occasionally, perhaps when attracted to a jingling ice-cream van with a smiling Italian driver – can make mistakes due to their undeveloped brains and sense of self-preservation.
It ain’t like that. And especially not in certain large cities.
The reality is that many kids will deliberately walk, ride, or stand in front of your car because they know you won’t run them over. They have been brought up badly enough to develop this attitude themselves, and they are conscious and calculating over it (and a great many other things). The only thing that is “undeveloped” in them is a sense of decency.
I live in a city where kids actually retain some traces of human behaviour, instead of the bestial kind prevalent elsewhere, and this happens all the time. The kids involved can be very young – and I’m always of the opinion that if you know what you are doing then you should expect to be held responsible for it.
And adults – the parents of these little angels – are even worse. I lose count of the number of puschairs I see poking out between parked cars as the “mother” seeks to find a way across without endangering herself – usually 10 metres from a crossing. I also lose count of the number of cars with “child on board” (any of the variants) signs speeding, cutting me up, and driving extremely erratically on any given day – especially from 3pm onwards on schooldays.
If someone “makes a mistake” and runs out in front of you, 90% of the time it isn’t because they’re a kid. It’s because they’re an idiot who has had role models help them develop their behavior to where it is today.
By all means, attack speeding – true speeding. But don’t just attack cars because of stupidity and poor upbringing.
The