Getting the School Pick-Up Right: Road Safety Review
The school run is one of the most familiar road safety challenges we come across as a company. It is a short, predictable window each day when a large number of vehicles and young pedestrians need to share the same space.
We were recently commissioned to carry out an independent road safety review of school pick-up and drop-off arrangements at a large independent school, along with the potential for alternative parking and pick-up locations elsewhere on the site. The safety review was carried out by Darren Newbold, Principal Engineer at TMS.
A familiar pinch point
Like many schools, the site experiences a short but intense peak each afternoon as parents and carers arrive to collect pupils. Our role at TMS was to look at how vehicles and pedestrians move through this period, where any pinch points occur, and how consistently the existing arrangements are managed day to day.
The aim was to provide impartial, evidence-based advice rather than start from an assumption that change was needed. It is a pattern we recognise from school sites across the country: capacity is rarely the whole story, and how well an arrangement is managed in practice can be just as important as its physical layout.
Why moving the problem isn’t always the answer
As part of the road safety review, we also assessed options for relocating parking and pick-up elsewhere on the site. It is a common instinct when a car park feels busy, but alternative locations can bring their own challenges and trade-offs.
In this case, alternative sites would have required new footways, careful consideration of gradients and lighting, and carried a real risk of queuing spilling out onto the public highway.
Because the review was independent of any preferred option, we were able to provide our professional opinion that the existing arrangement, with some practical improvements, remained the stronger choice. Relocating the parking and pick-up arrangements elsewhere on the site would not necessarily have resolved the underlying issues.
Small changes, meaningful impact
Our recommendations focused on the kind of practical measures that can make a significant difference at school sites: consistent and visible traffic management throughout the pick-up period, better use of existing parking capacity, and improvements to signage and lighting in areas where different road users interact.
None of these measures require major infrastructure investment. Instead, they are about making sure an already workable arrangement is managed consistently and effectively every day, not just when it is easy to do so.
The value of an independent review
The independent road safety review demonstrates what this type of assessment is really intended to achieve. It is not about recommending change for the sake of it, or assuming that a busy arrangement is necessarily an unsafe one. Sometimes the most valuable outcome is impartial confirmation that the existing approach is the right one, alongside clear and practical advice on the small adjustments that can make the environment safer and more effective for everyone.
For Darren, the value of the road safety review was in looking beyond plans and perceptions to understand what was actually happening on site:
“What made the review worthwhile was being able to look at how the site actually operates. The pick-up period puts the site under real pressure, so understanding how vehicles and pedestrians interact helped us understand where the real areas of concern were, and where they weren’t.
The road safety review gave the school confidence that the existing arrangement could work with some practical improvements, which is just as valuable as recommending a major change.”
Darren Newbold – Principal Engineer
Get in touch
TMS provides independent road safety reviews for schools, commercial and retail developments, and other schemes across the UK. We provide impartial, evidence-based advice to identify potential safety issues and conflicts between road users, with practical and proportionate recommendations to help mitigate risks and improve road safety.
To discuss your requirements please call us on +44 (0)24 7669 0900 or alternatively please email Lorna Styring