National Road Safety Week will be held from 11 to 18 May. All road safety is local, and we can each do our part to ensure that everyone gets home safely. Every time you are on the road choose to drive so others survive. 

Speed limits and drop-off, pick-up and parking rules exist to keep children, parents and carers safe and to minimise speed and traffic jams around schools. Here are some tips from Queensland Transport for parking safely around schools.

When parking on the roads or streets around your children’s school:

• say goodbye to your children on the school side of the road—never get them to cross the road to their school’s entrance alone
• walk across the road and meet your children after school (never call out to them from the other side)
• try to leave home early to avoid arriving at the busiest times
• follow the directions of all signs
• park a safe distance from all crossings
• always single park (double parking causes accidents and traffic jams)
• try parking a few streets away from the school and walking with your children
• organise a car pool with other parents—to reduce the number of cars trying to park around your children’s school.

There can often be queues at drop-off and pick-up areas outside schools. When using a drop-off and pick-up area you:

• must use the area like a quick moving taxi rank
• need to move forward in the queue of vehicles to the signed area
• are only allowed 2 minutes in the signed area (if you take any longer you can be fined)—if your children are not ready to get straight into your vehicle at pick-up time, you will need to drive round the block and queue to enter the area again
• should only let your children out once you have pulled into the signed area (it is dangerous to let them out while waiting in a queue)
• should teach your children to look out for your vehicle and to get in quickly and independently when you pull up