A car alarm is blaring and catching every student’s attention. A student driver in the school parking lot just backed into a parked car, causing the alarm to go off and distracting all other drivers. Instead of stopping to leave a note on the person’s car who was damaged, the student driver simply drives off into the dismissal line as if nothing happened. This story, and many other horror stories from our parking lot happen most days in the FHC student parking lot.
“Stressful, chaotic, and very bad,” are the three words that senior Ally Brower would use to describe the parking lot at dismissal time.
Our parking lot has become infamous for having horrible drivers and even worse traffic during dismissal. Dismissal is so chaotic that some students have not been able to leave the parking lot until 2:45, even though school dismisses at 2:20. Our parking lot’s horrible reputation of being disorganized and disorderly is completely deserved. Brower explains why the student parking lot is a stressful space for many student drivers.
“I feel like I’m always at risk of getting hit by somebody because student drivers are mean and scary,” Brower said.
Our student parking lot is filled to the brim with careless and haphazard drivers. The drivers in our parking lot have no understanding of how to zipper merge and honestly, have no care for anyone else driving.
I have heard countless stories of people narrowly avoiding getting side swiped just because some teenager wanted to get home all of 2 minutes earlier. The multitude of near side swipes and almost rear endings are what causes many students to hate the student parking lot. Some students avoid parking in the student parking lot at all costs, due to a combination of fear and hatred for the parking lot. Brower shares why she is concerned for her car’s safety in the student parking lot.
“Yes [I fear for my car’s safety] because some people refuse to let other people out. I’ll try to get out and they either won’t let me or almost hit me. Like, not even centimeters away [from hitting me at dismissal time], it’s scary.” Brower said, “I almost got run over by my friend the other day because she wasn’t paying attention.”
The horrible conditions of our parking lot have become too much. Students should not have to worry about their cars safety, or their own, when driving in our parking lot. This is my public ask to all those reading this, please be a kinder and more considerate driver.
Be aware that there are more people than just you who want to go home, so let a car in front of you in the dismissal line. Remember the next time that you feel like speeding up to cut someone off, you could be causing hundreds of dollars of damage. And all for what, to be stuck at the same red light as the person you ended up cutting off?
But most importantly of all, keep in mind that we have many middle schoolers that walk over from Saeger into our parking lot during dismissal time, so please for their sake, drive at a normal speed in our parking lot. The last thing you want at the end of the school day is to realize that you were inches away from hitting some middle schooler on their bike because you wanted to be home 3 minutes earlier than usual. For the safety of our peers and cars, all student drivers here at FHC need to take the step to be a bit more cautious when leaving the parking lot during dismissal time.