Pulling out of RBHS’ south parking lot and onto the service road, a driver has three options: left, right and an accident.
The third choice becomes available with either direction the driver decides to take during school hours. The impending car crash is not truly anyone’s fault; whoever is driving the car to the parking lot could be extra careful and still get T-boned, and the oncoming cars could slow down and still not be aware that someone is attempting to pull out.
The reason for wrecking one’s car and one’s insurance cost is because RBHS does not have traffic mirrors outside the south lot.
Outside of the Chick-Fil-A, 305 N. Stadium Blvd., a traffic mirror allows customers to safely pull onto the road when a dumpster obstructs their views. At RBHS, cars parked on the side of the road by the south entrance block drivers’ ability to see oncoming traffic, but without a safety mirror. Other businesses have already implemented a traffic mirror to keep people and their cars from injury. RBHS needs to adopt the same system.
RBHS prohibits freshmen and sophomores from leaving campus for their own safety, but does administration stop caring about safety when those same students attempt to leave at the end of the day?
Without a traffic mirror helping students enter the roadway, the current answer to this question seems close to a yes.
Blind spot collisions are one of the most common yet most easily preventable types of accidents, as reported by National Safety Mirror, and blind spot technology on cars reduced total car crashes by 14 percent and accidents yielding injury by 23 percent, according to a study by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Although equipping every student car with blind-spot detection technology is not realistic, RBHS can do its part to keep students safe by installing a mirror.
A traffic mirror is not costly. In order for the mirror to be effective, there needs to be two mirrors touching each other on one side to form a V-shape, with one mirror pointing to the north side of the service road, and one to the south. The mirrors are commonly mounted to posts and trees, so RBHS would need to install a pole three to five feet in the ground in addition to the mirror itself.
The traffic mirror costs less than yearly car maintenance, according to the National Safety Mirror website, and RBHS could easily pay for these expenses. If administration used the money from 12 students’ parking passes — $50 each — it would pay for the two mirrors RBHS needs to keep students safe.
Additionally, geometry classes could use the traffic mirrors as a learning opportunity to study parabolas, and their help with the math of installing the mirrors could be an academic project with real-life results.
Students do not create the danger outside of the south parking lot. The people who park on the side of the road are parking legally; cars are exiting slowly and cautiously, and oncoming cars have the right of way, though they can also not see which cars are attempting to pull out. Traffic mirrors are a simple solution to a threatening daily endeavor.
What do you think about the current driving conditions at RBHS? Let us know in the comments below!