Crow Road: Petition launched to have lollipop person at Glasgow junction

Mother-of-two Linda Tait is petitioning for a school crossing patroller at the Crow Road/ Whittingehame crossing in the city’s West End.

The 46-year-old said she sees drivers speeding, jumping red lights and blocking the junction every day when walking her children to and from school.

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She said: “This is about every pupil that crosses there because every child is at risk no matter where you’re coming from.

“The drivers seem to lose all sense of the highway code, they seem to lose how to drive at this junction.

“Albeit, kids aren’t as good at crossing roads as we are so there needs to be a deterrent, there needs to be someone with a lollipop stick saying ‘there’s children crossing here’.

She added: “The whole of Crow Road is hell for kids to cross, really, really dangerous, and there will be a fatality.

“There’s lots of rules that are broken and someone’s going to get killed soon.

“We need to keep our wee people safe.”

Since the petition went live through Glasgow City Council on Monday, December 20 it has already received more than 400 signatures.

Linda everyone she has spoken to in the local community has been supportive of it.

She said: “Where we live in Claythorn, there are lots of young families that have moved in so they’re saying ‘well my kids are going to have to cross there’.

“Even the elderly people that I spoke to when it first went live were saying ‘it’s worse now than it’s ever been, it was bad when my kids were at school but the driving standard has gone down’.

“We really want to push that and let the council know this is not on.

“We want to say ‘look how passionate people are about this’.

“Let’s try and get the signatures as high as possible and give them a clear message that we need something done about this.”

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Linda highlights that in order to ensure children live a more active and healthy lifestyle they should be able to walk safely, but at the moment she would rather drive than let her children walk by themselves.

She said: “I’m all for walking, getting them out on their bikes, but that’s just too dangerous, we can’t let them be independent.”

Linda’s family are also passionate about having a lollipop person at the junction and her daughter Sally spent her eleventh birthday on Tuesday handing out flyers in the area with her dad Richard, 55.

Both Sally and eight-year-old Samuel were the first two people to sign the petition when it went live after Linda and Richard.

Anyone of any age who is a resident of Glasgow and has an email address can sign the petition, which closes on Monday, January 31.

To view the petition click HERE.