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Dear Care and Feeding,
Our house sits on a heavily wooded hill, and there isn’t much in terms of street lights—and no sidewalks. Though there are only a few houses on our bend of the road, we get people speeding through. We have new neighbors. The mother’s behavior is going to end in tragedy.
The neighbors have several very small children. The mom, for some unholy reason, thinks nothing of letting them bike in the street. She lets her babies ride around well ahead of her as she strolls leisurely several yards behind. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.
My husband has already had a close call with one of the kids. He was backing out and the toddler zoomed right behind the bumper. Luckily, my husband was paying attention and was fast to put his foot on the brake. Even going as slow as he was, just a few miles per hour, it would have been a tragedy if he hadn’t been alert.
The mother’s reaction was to lay into my husband for not being careful enough! The kicker is that she said her kids have a right to play in the street. (There is a park five blocks away, but that is too far for her to go, apparently.) My husband said it was a bad conversation.
What do we do here? It would haunt me if one of these kids got hit because their mother was too lazy to care.
—Blind Corner
Dear Blind,
Well, not only has this neighbor of yours created a dangerous situation, she’s preemptively precluded me from giving the advice I wanted to give. I was going to suggest that you look for an opportunity to “accidentally” discover her kids being reckless so you could loudly tell them to be careful because you were sure their mom wouldn’t want them to get hurt!
Unfortunately, since a non-staged version of this has already happened, and your neighbor’s reaction was to get all indignant and annoying with your husband, I think this ship has sailed. You don’t have the plausible deniability required to pull off such a passive-aggressive act anymore, and I don’t have any confidence that she’d be moved by it!
I’m not sure you have any direct courses of action. Short of egregious negligence, what people let their kids do is their business, and if she’s at least near her children while they’re in the street, I’m not sure this warrants a call to the police or protective services. But there are some things you could try. You could put up a “kids playing” sign in your own yard, if you have kids, and you can continue to drive carefully and slowly yourselves. It does also seem like the kind of issue you could raise inconspicuously with other neighbors if you know them well enough; maybe someone else expressing concern to her in a situation other than a near-accident would be the right kind of nudge. Another constructive idea: Look for a pedestrian/cyclist or safe streets advocacy group in your area that you could get involved with. It sounds like the area could maybe use sidewalks—or curb extensions or speed bumps to slow traffic.
Link
Our house sits on a heavily wooded hill, and there isn’t much in terms of street lights—and no sidewalks. Though there are only a few houses on our bend of the road, we get people speeding through. We have new neighbors. The mother’s behavior is going to end in tragedy.
The neighbors have several very small children. The mom, for some unholy reason, thinks nothing of letting them bike in the street. She lets her babies ride around well ahead of her as she strolls leisurely several yards behind. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.
My husband has already had a close call with one of the kids. He was backing out and the toddler zoomed right behind the bumper. Luckily, my husband was paying attention and was fast to put his foot on the brake. Even going as slow as he was, just a few miles per hour, it would have been a tragedy if he hadn’t been alert.
The mother’s reaction was to lay into my husband for not being careful enough! The kicker is that she said her kids have a right to play in the street. (There is a park five blocks away, but that is too far for her to go, apparently.) My husband said it was a bad conversation.
What do we do here? It would haunt me if one of these kids got hit because their mother was too lazy to care.
—Blind Corner
Dear Blind,
Well, not only has this neighbor of yours created a dangerous situation, she’s preemptively precluded me from giving the advice I wanted to give. I was going to suggest that you look for an opportunity to “accidentally” discover her kids being reckless so you could loudly tell them to be careful because you were sure their mom wouldn’t want them to get hurt!
Unfortunately, since a non-staged version of this has already happened, and your neighbor’s reaction was to get all indignant and annoying with your husband, I think this ship has sailed. You don’t have the plausible deniability required to pull off such a passive-aggressive act anymore, and I don’t have any confidence that she’d be moved by it!
I’m not sure you have any direct courses of action. Short of egregious negligence, what people let their kids do is their business, and if she’s at least near her children while they’re in the street, I’m not sure this warrants a call to the police or protective services. But there are some things you could try. You could put up a “kids playing” sign in your own yard, if you have kids, and you can continue to drive carefully and slowly yourselves. It does also seem like the kind of issue you could raise inconspicuously with other neighbors if you know them well enough; maybe someone else expressing concern to her in a situation other than a near-accident would be the right kind of nudge. Another constructive idea: Look for a pedestrian/cyclist or safe streets advocacy group in your area that you could get involved with. It sounds like the area could maybe use sidewalks—or curb extensions or speed bumps to slow traffic.
Link
no subject