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when i went to school (in the suburban midwest) they literally specifically said that we weren't allowed to walk to school because it was too dangerous (despite having the zones anyway!)
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this is america, and as such i have literally never seen schoolchildren walking around near the school. there aren't cute little shops for them to go to nearby, it's grass and mcmansions. you're just sitting there crawling along at 25mph looking at empty sidewalks (if there are even sidewalks...)
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the low limit also causes drivers to get annoyed and pay less attention (especially since 25 feels SO SLOW on any big road) whereas if they gave people the basic dignity of assuming that they aren't trying to wantonly kill children and that if there were any around, you'd naturally slow out of respect. having the sign makes it seem more authoritarian and obnoxious
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and perhaps most importantly, before being allowed outside to play at age 3, i was taught to look out for cars because they're pretty dangerous
plus for some reason everyone online seems to get very bitchy and protective about this like yoU WaNt to KiLL chIldReN; no obviously i do not. there's just no reason to pretend like they're darting around the road such that we have to inconvenience our day like this en masse. (just in general, people seem to get very very performatively touchy about ACHKULLY i obey all the speed limits and i am a perfectly incredibly safe driver you are irRreSPnSibLe for not1!!! i'm sorry people keep honking at you and giving you the finger, perhaps speed up a bit.)
School zones are pointless. School zones are ticket traps. There's a 35 mph road I frequent that has school zones on it. It's not a school zone for the entire street, its 3 school zones and 3 non school zone areas. The non school zone parts are too short to comfortably accelerate from 20 to 35 before hitting the next school zone. This is designed to give cops and easy way to meet their ticket quotas.
Well designed roads should be safe for pedestrians at all time. If you need special speed limits at certain times to keep children safe, it means you've built your roads fundimentially wrong.
All urban roads need traffic calming.
See, this is the less entitled, more thoughtful way of saying what OP said. There's no question that road planning is haphazard and ridiculous, and further that a lot of such planning is done on dark patterns like maximizing income from legal penalties. But that is what should be fought, not "HOW DARE YOU MAKE ME SLOW DOWN NEXT TO WHERE IMPULSIVE SMALL HUMANS WITH THE ATTENTION SPAN OF A GNAT ARE LIKELY TO BE RUNNING AROUND!?"