Every August all across America, communities experience a phenomenon that I call the “Back to School Trafficitos.”
This behavioral phenomenon began last week between the hours of 7-9 a.m. and 3-5 p.m., when it magically seems that your community’s population doubled and every other driver has somehow lost the ability to operate a vehicle safely.
There are many variables that come into play to create this mysterious happening. It’s a week where everybody supernaturally and without any coordination just happens to return from summer vacations, coinciding with the opening of school.
Before this week, rush hour drivers have been surreptitiously lured into a sense of peace and tranquility. All their local traffic problems have worked themselves out in the preceding months as they dreamed of or reminisced about their summer travels.
With the exception of a few construction delays, everything seems to be running smoothly on the roads, then one morning in August “BAM!” —- all hell breaks loose as some 6.2 million public schools employees and another 50 million students wake up and migrate back to school.
When you pepper in the students and employees from the other 30,861 private schools in the United States, driving just becomes total mayhem.
This week, just in Kentucky alone, some 685,000 public school students and another 87,000 public school employees rush off to school, congesting our state roadways and elevating the collective blood pressure of all morning commuters.
An additional 480,000 school buses magically appear out of nowhere on our streets, where they are slotted to drive approximate 5.7 trillion miles, hauling some 26 million students to and from some 98,817 public schools. That leaves the other 24 million students to fend for their own transportation needs.
Complicating matters, August is also the month college students, faculty and staff return to campuses, throwing additional fuel on the fire. In Kentucky, according to my research, with the eight state colleges, 23 private, nonprofit four-year institutions and 16 community colleges, another 200,000 plus full-time college students are added to the mix.
Statistics show an average of 51 percent of college students commute to classes, according to Schoolguide.com.
And those numbers doesn’t include staff and faculty members driving to work once the fall semester begins. The University of Kentucky alone employs 12,000 staff and 2,000 faculty members.
Back in the 1960’s, when I was in elementary school, nearly 48 percent of students in American walked or rode their bikes to school — uphill both ways. Today some schools prohibit children from walking and bicycling to school for safety reasons.
According to Safe Routes to School (SRTS), only 13 percent of children 5 to 14 years of age walked or bicycled to school, thus contributing to annual crowded road phenomena as commuters are forced to deal with increased traffic.
While the percentage of children not using buses decreases, motor vehicle traffic continues to increase — congesting our roadways as parents become convinced that walking to school is unsafe for their children.
As a result, more parents are driving their kids to school. According to SRTS, up to 30 percent of our morning traffic is generated just from parents driving their children to school. One report in Streetblog.org went as far to say that about three-quarters of school-aged kids in America get to and from school by car.
It is not surprising that the “Back to School Trafficitos” phenomenon is a nasty week for traffic congestion everywhere.
Many parents are working out the kinks in their morning routines, getting used to new commutes at the start of the school year, thus causing many to be overstressed because they haven’t budgeted enough transportation time.
With the roads already crowded with school buses, school employees and parental taxi drivers, another factor needs to be considered: the most dangerous of all drivers, the infamous and inherently risky 16-18 year-olds, transporting themselves to and from their places of learning.
Statistics don’t lie: 16 year-olds have higher crash rates than drivers of any other age. In 2010, one third of deaths among those age 13 to 19 occurred in motor vehicle crashes.
Also, 20 percent of 16-year-old drivers have an accident within their first year of driving. Many of them occur while going to school.
Unskilled drivers represent a small portion of the traffic congestion, but they are more prone to display unsafe and distracted driving habits, making our commutes to work that much more hazardous.
Young drivers are prone to being distracted, especially with the increasing use of cell phones. This is part of the reason why U.S. traffic deaths increased nearly eight percent from 2014 to 2015, according to data recently released by the National Highway Traffic Administration.
To help survive back to school trafficitos phenomenon, here are some helpful hints:
If You Don’t Have Kids, Plan Your Vacation This Week. If you can do this, you can skip the rest of the hints.
Plan and Allow For Extra Time. Decide how much time you will need to arrive at your destination, then multiply it by two.
Observe Speed Limits and Obey All Traffic Laws. You may be the only one actually following this hint, but you will triple your chances of avoiding an accident.
Route Work Commutes in a Clockwise Manner. By avoiding left hand turns you will make up the difference in distance by avoiding lengthy delays. Your risk for a severe auto accident also declines.
Avoid School Traffic. Why punish yourself? Just avoid congested areas if possible and take the longer route.
Avoid Distracted Driving. Leave your phone in your pocket or purse. Eat your breakfast and put your makeup on at home.
Be Safe My Friends.
Keven Moore works in risk management services. He has a bachelor’s degree from University of Kentucky, a master’s from Eastern Kentucky University and 25-plus years of experience in the safety and insurance profession. He lives in Lexington with his family and works out of both the Lexington and Northern Kentucky offices. Keven can be reached at kmoore@roeding.com.
