SUVs for School Drops!

Yesterday morning news papers carried two interesting stories. 

1) TATA launching the Land Rover in India (front page HINDU) and

2) If American's stopped using their SUVs, the poorest of the world can all have free electricity (TOI front page last item)

Interesting that the day the TATAs are launching this huge mean automobile, we also have this other story.

My worry is the number of people I see going to drop their children to school in the morning in SUVs and large vehicles that occpupy the road completely. 

I walk my daughter to her school most mornings and am surprised at the speed with which parent's want to dump their children in the school, the large cars of all shapes and sizes with just the kid and one parent zooms past at crazy speed, just to drop the child in the school gate and zoom past faster from there. Why do people use such large vehicles and waste of fuel to just drop a small child in the school? And what does the child get prepared for if it is hurried each morning even at this early age? This school has its own vehicles picking up children from all around, but, with the growth of the car usage, most parents seem to prefer dropping their child themselves. 

Every morning and afternoon, outside our office in Mylapore we see the near ritual spectacle of Vidya Mandir parents honking unendingly and occupying two thirds of the narrow Royapettah High Road to drop and pick up their children. The school authorities seem to not be in control of the situation, the lone police constable in the morning tries his best, but, in the afternoon he goes missing too and the traffic in the entire stretch is completely disrupted. The road rage caused by this ritual alone must cause several road skirmishes each day. I am sure this ritual is enacted in a few thousand places across the city twice a day.

I don't know whether any NGO or network has even thought about this as an issue, but, the problem of how to handle the school commuters traffic twice a day needs to be addressed urgently if this city (and many others I am sure) will have to retain any sanity with TATAs crowding us with more cars in all sizes for all people later this year.

P.S.: Few days back our transport minister had proclaimed rather proudly in the Assembly that Chennai has the maximum number of two wheelers in the country, about 90 lakh registered two wheelers.