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The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

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Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#81

Post by bombcar »

vidarh wrote: post #62
lvl155 wrote: post #43

Counter point: I used to walk home from school. Got robbed at gun point several times. Jumped for my skin color numerous times. Had a neighborhood buddy who got stabbed three times on his way home and survived. I can go on and on and on. I had to learn to walk an extra 20-30 minutes to avoid these situations. I will never let my kids walk home in 2025. Edit: no one told these parents to drive up for pick up like a dr…

If I lived in the kind of third world hellhole where this was a realistic scenario, I'd leave the country.

You don't even need to leave the country, as these locations are very specific parts of cities in the country.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#83

Post by lvl155 »

vidarh wrote: post #62
lvl155 wrote: post #43

Counter point: I used to walk home from school. Got robbed at gun point several times. Jumped for my skin color numerous times. Had a neighborhood buddy who got stabbed three times on his way home and survived. I can go on and on and on. I had to learn to walk an extra 20-30 minutes to avoid these situations. I will never let my kids walk home in 2025. Edit: no one told these parents to drive up for pick up like a dr…

If I lived in the kind of third world hellhole where this was a realistic scenario, I'd leave the country.

It’s the US. People on here are so sheltered.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#84

Post by commandlinefan »

charlie0 wrote: post #16
bongodongobob wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fucking ridiculous.

What's more ridiculous is someone probably sued them and they were forced to do something asinine like that as CYA.

It's not like they're great at it, either. My wife is very visibly hispanic, and on multiple occasions when she went to pick up our (half white but not at all hispanic looking) kids, they'd send the wrong kids to the car because there were only two hispanic-looking kids left.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#85

Post by ainiriand »

mmmlinux wrote: post #26
aklemm wrote: post #5

Well that headline sums it up. After 10 years of dealing with it and wondering "how the f did we get to this point", it's satisfying to hear it called what it is. A small win in our family was in my son's final year of elementary school when he finally decided to try walking home 1.5 miles; that Spring was a delight for him. He was properly decompressed and had logged a minimum amount of physical activity for good sl…

"he decided" is probably one of the issues here. back in the day it would have been "this is what your doing now kid"

That kind of upbringing worked out really well for the boomers, we are in this mess because of that. Kids should have agency and independence, but also a feeling of safety, trust, and security. You cannot force a kid to work against their own safety instinct because of your own selfish comfort.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#86

Post by mitthrowaway2 »

furyofantares wrote: post #48

The article makes a lot of great points, but looks to miss that kids are enrolled in a lot of after school activities these days. I was never enrolled in any as a kid and never really expected for my kid to be, because I thought parents were the motivating factor for kids to get into a bunch of activities, but IME they aren't. My kid loves her activities and picking her up to shuttle her directly to it is a lot quick…

The article mentions Japan as a comparison, where kids are also enrolled in a lot of after-school activities. They tend to get there on their own.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#87

Post by kimbernator »

delichon wrote: post #3

We can just wait for this problem to go away as robocars becomes the norm. We'll look back on the primitive times when kids couldn't just click a button or whisper an instruction for a ride like anyone else.

I used to be in this camp, but when it comes down to it busses, trains, and other shared transportation options are both the past and the future. Kids from all economic backgrounds can use them at once, they are extremely space and energy efficient, and the necessity of walking the final leg to the central access point is healthier for our bodies and our communities.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#88

Post by Aurornis »

skybrian wrote: post #58

The bar chart is pretty funny. "Over 3 miles" is the highest bucket? That's supposed to be far? I went to school in a semi-rural school district, one of the largest in the state by area. I just checked Google Maps and the high school is 13 miles away, 16 minutes by car (much of it highway), and maybe a half hour by school bus if I remember correctly. It could be a bit tedious, but it wasn't a terrible commute by any…

> The bar chart is pretty funny. "Over 3 miles" is the highest bucket? That's supposed to be far?

The buckets were chosen because 3 miles is farther than you'd reasonably expect kids to be able to walk to and from school every day. They say this right under the chart.

It's not helpful to do chest-thumping to compare whose farthest away from school when the entire point of the section is that 80% of people fall into that bucket.

> Necessity? I don't see what's wrong with school buses. They're just about the only practical form of mass transit in rural areas.

Again, you've missed the point of the article. In cities, students are spread out in all directions. It's not feasible for a bus to loop around an entire city to pick everyone up when they're spread all over.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#89

Post by aklemm »

mmmlinux wrote: post #26
aklemm wrote: post #5

Well that headline sums it up. After 10 years of dealing with it and wondering "how the f did we get to this point", it's satisfying to hear it called what it is. A small win in our family was in my son's final year of elementary school when he finally decided to try walking home 1.5 miles; that Spring was a delight for him. He was properly decompressed and had logged a minimum amount of physical activity for good sl…

"he decided" is probably one of the issues here. back in the day it would have been "this is what your doing now kid"

His choices were bus or walk (my experiences in the car lines are from days when kids needed to picked up for an occasion) before you jump to too many conclusions.

Re: The School Car Pickup Line Is a National Embarrassment

#90

Post by commandlinefan »

legitster wrote: post #32

Unfortunately we are one of those families. The bus service is completely unreasonable. They shopped it out to the lowest bidder and the stops are all in terrible spots on busy streets. It also takes longer to sit and wait in the cold with a 6 year old than it would be to just drive there and back.

Our school system wouldn't send buses if you were within two miles of the school. We were (seriously) 1.99 miles away, so we had to drive our kids back and forth.
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