Dear Editor,
I am writing this letter as a concerned parent of two children who attend Ecole Percy Pegler.
My concern is with the unsafe practice of lazy parents who continually jaywalk their children across Okotoks Drive to Percy Pegler School. This morning I witnessed what I considered to be the proverbial ‘last straw’.
At around 8:10 a.m. I sat in my vehicle, parked in the pull-out on the south side of Okotoks Drive, designed to safely drop off your children. I watched a female park her green Dodge Caravan on the north side of Okotoks Drive. She then walked out from between parked vehicles, on a blind curve and icy roads with two young children and jaywalked across the street.
I noticed a yellow DHL cube van traveling east on Okotoks Drive braking and sliding on the icy road. The truck driver was not driving too fast or in a dangerous manner at all. The woman stopped in the middle of the road and narrowly missed being struck. My seven-year-old daughter witnessed this and said, “That was close”. She could not have been more right.
These lazy parents need to consider someone beside themselves. If that woman and her children had been struck, how many other young children, including my daughter would have witnessed it? It would have destroyed countless families’ lives all to save the half block walk to the crosswalk. I believe this teaches your children it is okay to dart out from between parked cars and jaywalk, creating a dangerous situation as the children begin to cross by themselves.
To add fuel to the fire, I watched an Okotoks Peace Officer drive by three times while I was parked there and not once paid any attention to this extremely unsafe practice. I’m not saying they all deserve tickets, however, I do believe it needs to be addressed and not ignored.
On one occasion I even watched a Peace Officer stop to allow a parent to jaywalk across in front of her vehicle. To me that sends the message this unsafe behaviour is acceptable.
Please walk the extra distance and use the school patrollers and the marked crosswalk for everyone’s safety. I hope these parents can sleep well knowing that if a car strikes their child because they jaywalked from between parked cars, they were only doing what they were taught.
Todd Darrah
Okotoks
