<PING> Kate

This seems to be the year for extraordinary winter weather. We (Pacific NW, USA) had 20" of ice and snow at Christmastime, Sharon has just been through an awful ice storm, and now the news is full of the record-breaking snow in the UK. How are you doing?

Beverly

Reply to
BEI Design
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3" of snow had the eastern side of the UK in headless chicken mode! OK, so there were sub-zero temperatures all day, and icy roads, but I'll never understand why so many schools were closed!
Reply to
Kate XXXXXX

I've been watching the weather and snow in London and wondering about you. Barbara in cold Florida

Reply to
Bobbie Sews More

Bright sun today. Snow on the retreat.

Reply to
Kate XXXXXX

I can't speak to your particular situation but in our district a substantial number of high scchool students drive themselves, siblings and friends to school. And this is not a subset of drivers that you want out and about in hazardous conditions.

My daughter was nearly killed last month. There was black ice but district officials failed to cancel classes. A driver changed lanes abruptly in front of her on one of the little bridges. She hit the brakes, spun out. A glancing impact straightened out her trajectory - lucky thing, too, or the truck would have rolled over as it went over the 50 foot embankment.

The truck went down the slope like a sled. Brakes, e-brake, throwing it into park, nothing had the slightest effect. It landed on its nose when it hit bottom. My daughter had her harness on or she'd have gone right through the windshield.

As it was, she was horribly bruised and bashed up. Fortunately for her she had purchased and installed a fat, cushy memoryy foam steering wheel cover only days before. When i got there you could still see her finger marks, and the imprint of the bridge of her nose.

The hill was so ice-y that my daughter and the officer who came to her aid had to take turns dragging each other up the slope. This was the third accident on that bridge in less than an hour. The officer decided to position his cruiser so as to force drivers to slow down but was t-boned by yet another vehicle befor he could even get turned around.

Reply to
Kathleen

I'm glad to know you are OK. Schools choose to close here also, out of concern for the safety of all concerned. We don't have much snow removal equipment because it's so rare.

Beverly

Reply to
BEI Design

In the UK the earliest you can be out on public roads as a car driver is

17, so *most* 'young' drivers are older than that. In addition, cars, insurance, road tax and fuel are all a LOT more expensive than in the USA, so there are fewer school aged drivers on the roads. Schools often have *very* limited parking - and very little on-street parking close to them, so even staff don't always get a parking place, and students must have permission from their school to bring a car. This leads to even fewer school students driving to school on a regular basis. The biggest problem is usually mums driving their brats walking distances to schools

- often less than half a mile where there are adequate footpaths! Minor low speed shunts are the order of the day.

James gets the bus. It didn't run yesterday.

-------------88-----------------

Some folk are just plain stupid, and it's usually the innocent who pay.

Most cars these days in the UK are fitted with driver and front passenger air bags, even small cars. Insurance is so horrific that very

*very* few folk under 25 and not in full time, well paid jobs can get insurance for an SUV type vehicle.
Reply to
Kate XXXXXX

This is our coldest winter for 10 years! Last time we had enough snow to build a snow man, James was two and a half!

Reply to
Kate XXXXXX

The 19" (8" of snow, 1" of ice, another 8" of snow) we had Christmas week was a record here. I really worry about this global cooling. ;->

Beverly

Reply to
BEI Design

I also am in real despair about the level of math education...

;-}

Beverly, who had 8" = 1" = 10" of ice and snow

Reply to
BEI Design

"+" and "+" dammit!

Beverly, going for a cup of strong coffee now....

Reply to
BEI Design

I asked that same question, one evening when the weather had been beautiful for walking but all the schools were closed. We finally realized that the superintendent of schools had had to make the go/don't go decision long before the children got up in order to get everybody notified in time, and at that time there had been a non-negligible chance that the weather would turn really nasty.

The root cause is that we got carried away with the consolidation mania, back in the middle of the 20th century, and made nearly all our schools too %&#! big -- when I was in school, if my Mom looked out the window and it was snowing, she'd say "hurry -- the bus driver will start early today because he'll have to drive slow." When some of the children spend two hours on the bus every morning, running the bus routes at half speed isn't an option.

Not to mention that school buses are no longer built on farm-truck chassis.

Reply to
Joy Beeson

Living right opposite the local junior school, yes that really is the biggest problem. The school itself is situated on a crossroads, and the roads around the school are a no-go area from about 08.45 to 09.15. Mums quite literally abandon their cars wherever they can, kids run hell-for-leather in and out between the cars, mums are too busy chattering to each other, and then if a driver happens to try and get through this lot mums will shriek at kids for not paying attention when in reality it's they who aren't paying attention.

All this is in a village that isn't on a rat-run to anywhere else, that really does have only local traffic, where I've seen parents regularly driving 200yds rather than walk, where school starts at 09.00 and frequently parents turn up 5 minutes after. Small wonder that successive generations are becoming more and more tardy over time-keeping. I'm also left wondering how many young mums drive from school straight to the gym for a work-out.

Yes, we knew the school was here when we moved, we don't have a problem with the school, we do have a problem with the laziness of parents. Needless to say, you all now know what really annoys us now......

Oh, and FWIW, we only has a very light covering of snow which quickly turned to rain and nothing left at all. Dunno what all the fuss is about. :-)

Reply to
The Wanderer

We are lucky in that the dilivery mums tend to use the village hall car park, right next to the school. They still don't pay attention, being too interested in catching up on the latest gossip for that, but at least they are off the road! The school is down a lane going from the church to Darkest Kent.

James always said the person in his class who was always the last to arrive was the lass from across the road!

Me neither.

Reply to
Kate XXXXXX

And more expected today according to my parents in Maidenhead. Hope it's not making your life too difficult. Glad to see that nothing has changed in the UK and no one is prepared for snow. It's as though all in power seem to think that England has a Mediterranean climate!

I hate to compla>> This seems to be the year for extraordinary winter weather. We (Pacific

Reply to
Viviane

We have a social club about 50 yards away from the crossroads, and the club has long since said parents were welcome to use the carpark to drop off kids, but 50 yards is too far for most mums to walk, prefering to abandon their cars at the crossroads.

The crossroads is wide, with a couple of sweeping corners, and the entrance to the school is right on one corner. Cars are often left two or three abreast, with doors hanging open, completely blocking the corner. Yellow 'School - Keep Clear' zig-zag lines? Hah! they park on those as well, all because they're just too bl**dy lazy to walk a few yards.....

The police, Parish and District councils don't want to know. Guess it'll take an accident with a kiddy knocked down before someone sits up and does something.

Today's rant over!

Reply to
The Wanderer

So does James... He was out square bashing in it last night in what amounted to two T shirts, one with long sleeves! His feet got very cold on the frozen ground, so on Thursday he'll be wearing his new UK size 11 combat boots with thick insoles and two pairs of his dad's walking socks! :D

Bright sun again now, though it was a bit dull earlier. No more snow here.

Gods, no! I'd rather be here in the cold! I spent three years in Malta as a kid, and that was quite enough, thankyouverymuch! I can always move and get warm, but cooling down takes real effort! And I get sunburned very easily, having typically Celtic skin...

Reply to
Kate XXXXXX

I am deeply sympathetic. We 'Helled A Meeting' (to quote Big Sis, aged six at the time) on Saturday morning, about getting a 40mph limit put in past our row of houses. At present the road is 'derestricted', meaning the limit is 60mph! AAARRRGGGHHH!!! The big question was How many

*MORE* people need to be killed/badly injured/require the Air Ambulance to drop in by the bridge before KCC do anything about folk doing up to 80 on a blind corner with adverse camber ON THE BUS ROUTE and with no footpath for people who WANT to walk the mere mile to the village school? There's footpath from the END of the row of houses up into the village, where it stops! There is no footpath from here to town, hence no 'safe walking route' for James to get to school, despite us being just inside their 3 mile walking distance cut-off (we are 2.8 miles from his school: the first mile is totally without footpaths, and much of it is hedged right along side the road. This is, after all, rural Kent, and the roads have been like this for a couple of thousand years... ). The transport people came out and looked and agreed with my assessment, and thus granted him a free bus pass for his compulsory school years. We'll have to pay again for years 12 & 13. If they think it's not safe, why does the Highways Agency not agree?

At our meeting, our local councellor (a great feeble streak of nowt) thought putting in for a 40 limit was a waste of time as 'the police might object'. Hm... The local bobbies on the beat, the local traffic cops, and the ambulance and fire services are all in agreement that a 40 limit would lessen the incidents they have to mop up, so I can't see how that will wash. As I said at the time: The residents and the local police and emergency services ALL want a 40 limit. Why don't we put in for that, and *IF* the police in some office somewhere, rather than the local chaps, object, then we will deal with that on appeal, and keep pestering until we are satified. We are not prepared to cave in because someone in an office somewhere MIGHT object!

I did sharpen me Big Scary Teef on that councellor a bit... ;)

OK, deep breath... And don't forget to breathe OUT again!

Reply to
Kate XXXXXX

The way to tackle the problem is using the local development plans produced by both Kent and your Local Authority, assuming you're not within a unitary authority, in which case there'll only be the one.

Each Authority is required to produce local development plans where they make very broad-brush statements about all sorts of policy aspects, including housing, the countryside, amenities, transport, safety, etc.

These development plans are usually published on-line, but you may need to look for them, for some reason the LA's don't want to make it too easy for the public to get to their policy statements.

If you read through the appropriate bits,you can usually present your case within a framework that encompasses their policy statements. i.e. RT1 'We intend to promote road safety'. You then write giving the details of your case and pointing out that circumstances on the ground are at odds with their policy statement RT1 or whatever.

I've successfully objected to some proposed development on the grounds that it would conflict with such issues as flora and fauna, inadequate transport, employment prospects, etc.

Email me if you want any more info.

Reply to
The Wanderer

Richard, thanks for this and the offer of help. If it comes to it, I shall be contacting you! I've helped to prevent various developments in this area on different occasions, and this OUGHT to be easy by comparison, but we shall see...

Reply to
Kate XXXXXX

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