Many students who are drivers in this school know the difficulty of leaving the parking lot, after school. After school, everyone is trying to leave, or parents picking up their kids to leave.  As a result of this, there are many people in the parking area and around the school.  

This is a noticeably big problem and has been for many years due to there being 2,000 students on campus every day.  

I, myself as a student driver at West High, know the struggles of trying to leave the parking lot every day. People try to fight each other over getting out of the parking lot, including parents as well. 

I learned the hard way of trying to be a nice driver at first by letting people in or out of spaces in the parking lot. But I learned that people started taking advantage of my kindness in the parking lot. It was also taking me longer to leave the parking lot as well. 

Sometimes being aggressive is the way when you are driving because others will take advantage of you being too kind.  

Many student drivers have stated that it takes longer for them to leave school in the afternoon than to arrive in the morning.  Almost half of the time leaving in the afternoon is spent trying to get out of the student parking lot. 

I asked senior Param Singh “What kind of solutions do you think there are to help reduce the cause of traffic after school. He responded, “They should add more roads to help reduce traffic”.  

I believe some solutions that would help is waiting after school until the traffic dies down, but some people do have to leave early for work or sports. Another solution is to try to leave early as possible if you can before the traffic starts. 

 I know that may be a problem for most students because their teachers will not leave them until the bell has rung. But I try to leave my class as fast as possible to get to the parking lot before the traffic starts. Otherwise, I will be stuck in the traffic for an additional fifteen minutes extra.