Students Learn Safety

Educators Teach Kids How To Be 'Defensive Walkers'

Heather Coon, right, Ruth Hale Barker Middle School physical education teacher, directs sixth-graders Friday across Southeast 18th Street in Bentonville. The students were taking a walk around the school and learning crosswalk safety from teachers.
Heather Coon, right, Ruth Hale Barker Middle School physical education teacher, directs sixth-graders Friday across Southeast 18th Street in Bentonville. The students were taking a walk around the school and learning crosswalk safety from teachers.

— Hundreds of children walk to and from school each day as cars whiz by on city streets. Kennedy Pate walks home from Ruth Hale Barker Middle School every afternoon. The sixth-grader uses a crosswalk in front of the school, but she said drivers often go right through it.

At A Glance

Arkansas Crosswalk Law

“Where traffic-control signals are not in place or in operation, the driver of a vehicle shall yield the right of way, slowing down or stopping if need be to yield, to a pedestrian crossing the roadway within any marked crosswalk or within any unmarked crosswalk at an intersection.”

Source: Arkansas Code 27-51-1202, Pedestrians’ Right Of Way In Crosswalks

“My mom says drivers should see me because I’m so tall,” Kennedy said. “But sometimes they don’t pay attention.”

Tara Malloy, a physical education teacher at the school, has stories of her own. She came within a foot of being hit by a car in a crosswalk one day while holding up a stop sign for crosswalk duty.

“It’s amazing how oblivious drivers can be,” Malloy said. “It’s as if they don’t care.”

That’s why Malloy and her fellow teachers are working to help students be safer. They can’t do much about the drivers, but they are taking steps to turn students into “defensive walkers.”

All fifth- and sixth-grade students at the school underwent a refresher course in crosswalk safety this week. The overriding lesson: Don’t assume drivers will stop, whether in a crosswalk or not.

Teachers on crosswalk duty told the school’s physical education teachers that students generally believe cars will stop if they are in the crosswalk. Malloy said that’s often not the case, though it’s state law for drivers to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks. She routinely sees cars roll through stop signs, speed through crosswalks and even pass stopped school buses.

Students are usually pretty careful, said Tristan Walker, physical education teacher. But they can get distracted and forget to look both ways.

The school’s four physical education teachers put the lessons into practice on the street Friday morning. About 100 sixth-graders paired up and looked “left, right, left” before stepping into crosswalks.

“See, these people drive really fast,” teacher Jeff Snow told his group of students as a truck sped by them. “Make sure you have eye contact with drivers before you cross.”

The students crossed half a dozen crosswalks before heading onto the playground for some exercise. The message stuck with Kennedy and her friend, Julia Coryea. They parroted back the rules — “left, right, left,” “Assume the car isn’t paying attention” — before a heated tetherball match.

Mary Mae Jones Elementary School is also having crosswalk safety classes with its students. Elementary schools include crosswalk safety as part of the curriculum.

The increased focus on pedestrian safety comes a month after two Bentonville students were hit in separate accidents trying to cross streets after school. One of the students was crossing without the safety of a crosswalk, while another was crossing in a crosswalk at a traffic light.

Both of the students were flown to a trauma center at Mercy Hospital in Springfield, Mo. Megan Davis, 17, is recovering at The Institute for Rehabilitation and Research at Memorial Hermann in Houston. Geddon Kennedy, 12, is recovering at home.

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