Back to School Safety Tips
As kids are headed back to school, many for the first time in quite a while, the Maple Grove Police want parents to remind them about some important safety guidelines. Officer Jesse Mathwig says, “They may have forgotten some of the basic safety rules, make sure you’re crossing at crosswalks, make sure you’re not crossing in between intersections, make sure that vehicles are yielding to you before you go across a crosswalk, utilize a crossing guard if possible. With bicycle safety we want to make sure that kids are still wearing their helmet, wearing protective gear. We know a lot of kids do ride their bikes to school as a form of transportation, but when you are crossing those crosswalks make sure you tell your kids to hop off your bike, and just walk it across the crosswalk. And, again, make sure take that pause to look both ways to make sure that traffic is yielding to you.” Mathwig adds that if your kids ride the school bus, make sure to go over bus safety, saying, “The school bus driver will give a signal when it’s safe for the children to cross in front of the bus, but we field numerous school bus stop arm violation reports from the different bus companies that are utilized in the City of Maple Grove, with people that are violating the school bus stop arm. We are going to be out enforcing that heavily, to make sure that the school bus driver and passengers are safe.” And for drivers, pay attention, especially in school zones, “We get vehicles that do not slow down when children are present at the schools. Make sure that you are monitoring those speed signs when you are driving around, make sure that you’re aware of the speed zone changes, because a lot of them do decrease when children are present, and we’ll be enforcing that as well.” And he has one last message for parents, “Just be patient with pickup and dropoff, make sure that you’re aware of your surroundings, there can be kids that can cross your vehicle, so just be sure you’re looking around, and be patient with the system.” Visit the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website at http://www.NHTSA.gov under Road Safety for more information.
