As a parent, you may have to drive in and out of school zones multiple times a day. If you have several children at different schools, you could be driving through several different school zones twice daily, if not more due to sports and other extracurricular activities.
Despite school zones having reduced speed limits when compared with nearby, comparable roads and plenty of highly visible signage warning people of the potential for children crossing the roads, car crashes do still frequently happen in school zones.
Pedestrian crashes can leave your children severely injured
Many pedestrian crashes in school zones involve teenagers, who may cross the road while distracted by mobile devices. Younger children may also engage in unsafe behaviors while crossing a road near school. As many as 80% of kids sometimes break safety rules while in or near traffic close to their school.
What makes school zones potentially dangerous for drivers?
With reduced speed limits and lots of signage warning drivers to take care, you might expect that school zones would be an area with incredibly low rates of crashes. However, people often have multiple distractions when dropping off or picking up their children from school.
Checking that their children have everything, giving a greeting to a teacher or even waving at another parent in a nearby vehicle, could take someone’s eyes off the road for a long enough for them to rear-end someone else. Additionally, if someone has to make an emergency maneuver due to a child or other pedestrian suddenly stepping out in the street near the school, that might lead to them crashing into another vehicle.
Those who get hurt in a school zone still have rights related to that crash, especially if the collision was clearly the fault of another driver. Particularly in situations where your children also suffered injury, exploring all of your options for compensation will likely be in your best interests.
