THE ISSUE
Manheim Township High School parent Noel Crawford has shared her concerns about motorists running stop signs and speeding on campus roads with the school district administration and the Manheim Township Police Department multiple times over the past three years, according to the Sunday LNP | LancasterOnline “Lancaster Watchdog” column. As Ashley Stalnecker reported, “Manheim Township police are investigating Crawford’s complaint and plan to work with the school to develop solutions, according to the department’s public information officer, Sgt. Barry Waltz, though he wouldn’t provide details on potential solutions.”
We imagine that the Manheim Township High School and Middle School campus isn’t the only school property in Lancaster County where some teens and adults drive as if they never learned the rules of the road.
Overconfident teen drivers and stressed-out adults trying to get to their destinations on time via a dense web of roads? That’s a formula for traffic violations.
This is not to excuse the unsafe driving — it’s just to say that it should be anticipated. School drop-off and pickup times are chaotic, especially with so many parent and student drivers in the mix.
We’re glad to know the Manheim Township police plan to work with the school district to address the issue, but the solutions should already be in place.
Sgt. Waltz said Manheim Township police don’t have much authority over campus roads, including the most troublesome intersection pinpointed by Crawford — Arena Avenue and School Road— because the school district, not the township, owns them.
But as Stalnecker pointed out, Section 6113 of Pennsylvania’s vehicle code states that the owner of private property of at least 10 acres can ask local police to enforce posted speed limits and traffic-control devices. The owner, of course, in this case is the school district.
So the district could, and should, ask the township police to tighten enforcement and monitoring of speeding and other unsafe driving practices on campus roads.
We’re not suggesting a crackdown. But law enforcement and school districts should work together more closely — and more proactively — to educate young drivers. The goal should be to teach, not to punish.
“We can warn them if we know who they are,” Manheim Township School District Safety and Security Coordinator Bette Oberle told Stalnecker, referring to those not abiding by traffic safety rules. “But many times they don’t do it when we’re standing there. They do it when there’s nobody around.”
The technology exists to address this particular problem. We’re not suggesting that any school campus should be turned into a surveillance state. But traffic cameras seem like a good idea, and the footage could be used to help teen drivers correct their driving mistakes.
As for the adults ignoring the rules, we’re inclined to say to throw the book at them. They should know better. Speeding and driving recklessly in any school zone can’t be excused — and we’ll use this occasion to remind everyone that as summer nears, more kids are going to be riding bicycles and playing outside, so please be on the watch for them and drive safely.
Observing the scene April 16 at school dismissal time, Stalnecker saw several school buses run the stop sign on Arena Avenue, and several other buses rolling through the stop signs. And at least 10 cars were seen running stop signs either on School Road or Arena Avenue.
Oberle said it’s “an ongoing issue,” but added, “I don’t think it’s a major, major concern.”
We beg to differ. It hasn’t been a “major, major concern” because, thank heavens, no one has been hurt. But there’s no guarantee the district’s luck will continue.
Oberle told LNP | LancasterOnline the district has asked its police liaison to provide unmarked vehicles to monitor traffic on campus, but she was unsure how frequently that occurred. She said that at one point, the district advertised crossing guard positions for $25 an hour to monitor traffic and students crossing the streets. But the job involved standing in all sorts of weather, so it was a tough sell.
That’s a shame. That seems like a good part-time job for someone who cares about public safety and wants to earn some extra income.
The bad habits of adult drivers may be ingrained. But we still may have a chance of teaching teens better driving habits.
We’ve had our fill of heartrending stories of young lives interrupted or ended by vehicle crashes. As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports, the risk of motor vehicle crashes is higher among teens ages 16 to 19 than among any other age group. “Teen drivers in this age group have a fatal crash rate almost three times as high as drivers ages 20 and older per mile driven,” the CDC website states.
We can’t control what happens when teen drivers hit the open road. But in the closed environment of a school campus, we should be able to teach teens how to drive safely. And the lessons may include watching a parent or school bus driver get a ticket for speeding or rolling through a stop sign. It might be embarrassing for the grown-up behind the wheel, but we’d take fleeting embarrassment over lifelong grief and remorse any day.
