Many parents take the view that the roads are unsafe and therefore they drive their kids to school. But most people agree that the school run and drop off makes for a stressful few minutes outside the school gate as too many cars try to fit into too small a space, with lots of children crossing roads while cars arrive or leave.

I suspect most agree that there are far more cars on the road, compared to when parents themselves were at school.  And a great many parents work, so the idea of mum, and it usually was mum, walking the kids to school and then going home again is something from black and white TV.

So we all agreed on the problem.  Unfortunately, the solution all too often seems to involve someone else doing something – the council, the government, or the Police … It very rarely involves individual parents making different decisions.  But that’s human nature and there’s little point in getting worked up at individual parents.  After all, they are usually worried about the well-being of their kids … and maybe a little bit worried about getting to work on time.

So our solutions have to take it out of the hands of individuals.  We have to look at making schools either car-free or car-restrictive – as Glasgow does with car-free zones in many schools.

Along with fellow councillors, I attended a meeting recently at one school who are trying to tackle this problem.  Parents and teachers are understandably worried about challenging unhappy parents who might be asked to park further away from the school to drop off or collect their offspring. They recognise that it's shifting the problem further away but they know that the status quo is dangerous and the last thing anyone wants is an accident.

My view? We have to reduce the number of cars and we are also going to have to penalise those who break the rules.  Sadly, fines are usually more effective at changing behaviours than actual education or persuasion.

So in that particular school, my advice was to push for a car-free zone.  But I know that making fines easier to enforce is ultimately going to be needed in order to really reduce the numbers, and thereby reduce the danger!