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It turns out that one of the reasons I have seen some drop in the kids use of our drive is that they have moved to using the drive of the complex next door and sadly, there has been an accident and a child hurt there earlier this week. Not a bad one, but enough to be very distressing to the driver, child, and childs family. The car was moving slowly and the child hurtled down the hill into its side and flew off the scooter. (The drive next door is parallel to, and has the same hazards as ours.)
I wrote previously that its not a matter of harmless fun among the kids, but physically dangerous activity regardless whether there are cars present or not. Once you add the fact that there are blind corners both onto the main drive and then into many of the individual lots, as well as a tendency of some drivers to speed (by that I mean well over our limit of only 5km) it becomes very dangerous. I think that residents should have the right to be able to manoeuvre out of their own lots without the risk of hitting a child. Or a child hurtling out of nowhere, on a scooter without brakes, paying no attention to what cars may be doing and ploughing into their car.
The complaints I’ve had from owners have not been because they didn’t want kids using common property for fun activities, but because they don’t want a child hurt. The by-law against kids using dangerous common property unsupervised is the one I can apply to the situation to try and stop it. (There is nothing stopping the parents coming out and checking the kids are behaving safely.)
The situation cant be compared to studies of increased awareness by drivers of adult cyclists using roads for two reasons: One, kids under 10 simply don’t have the ability to assess the risks or have the insight to imagine what could happen in a situation, or react appropriately. They are unpredictable and it would be unreasonable to expect them to be anything else. The example of cyclists on roads relies in part on the cyclists behaving safely and predictably as well as the cars. The second reason that the studies don’t apply is that the results are based on STATISTICS and show accident rates DROPPING – we live in a specific case and don’t want ANY accidents.
The idyllic image of a multi-use driveway open space simply isn’t realistic. We wont be holding our christmas party there as its steep and uncomfortable and generally an unpleasant place to hang out. We’ll in the BBQ area with the child’s playground next to it.
But back to my original question in response to the comment that ScotlandX made that insurers wouldn’t pay if the OC have not stopped the activities. Is what i have done so far adequate? Or do we have to keep taking it further? And what would further be?