Posted by Natalie Lewis

 

The Jose Barrios Crosswalk

The crosswalk at Jose Barrios is very dangerous around 3:00 P.M. when school gets out
because the traffic does not obey the speed limit. When the children are released from school, there is a lot of traffic on Little Walnut Road driving well over the 15 miles per hour speed limit.
There are children that walk home from school that have to cross Little Walnut to get home.
Particularly the children that live in the Silver Cliffs Apartments walk to school because Jose
Barrios is just across the street from the apartments.

There is a crossing guard that helps the children to cross the street safely. He has a stop
sign to tell the traffic to stop. Usually the cars will slow down and stop for the children to cross
the street, but there are people who just do not care and speed. The crosswalk has warning signs
and lights that flash telling traffic to slow down. The lights start flashing at 3:00 P.M. and
continue to flash until 3:30 P.M. Most of the children are gone by 3:30 P.M. and the crossing guard has left.

I think that the school zone should be heavily patrolled between the hours of 3:00 P.M.
and 3:30 P.M. The police should strongly enforce the 15 miles per hour speed limit. The school
could try putting cameras on the street signs to help catch speeders. Maybe the city could put in
speed bumps or dips in the street to help slow down traffic. If a car gets caught speeding in a
school zone, there should be a fine with the minimum being one-hundred dollars for the first offence. The second offence, the person should have his or her license taken away for at least two
months. The third offence, the person should not be allowed to drive because they are a hazard to
the public .

We need to protect our children in our community from the dangers of cars speeding
through the crosswalk. If we don’t do something to stop the cars from speeding, someone’s
child could get run over and be hurt very badly. It would be very sad to see a child get hurt just
because someone doesn’t want to obey the law.

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