Today’s society is highly-regulated and sometimes it borders on the ridiculous.
The bylaw imposed by strata in a Chemainus neighbourhood to ban kids from playing, riding bikes or doing anything on the street is definitely a case in point.
This entire neighbourhood at the moment has exactly 11 kids living there. Only one is a teenager.
We want our kids that age to grow up playing outside like previous generations and not gluing themselves to the TV or tech devices any more than necessary.
The fact these kids can’t even ride their bikes between houses now to play together is ludicrous.
The street doesn’t connect to any roadways so it’s very quiet. The only traffic within the complex is local.
There hasn’t been a problem with seniors running over kids, but someone decided this would be a good precautionary measure to ensure that doesn’t happen. Seniors who can’t see kids among the rows of houses shouldn’t be driving.
It’s not as if kids are playing in the middle of the street drawing figurines with chalk. That would certainly be a safety concern.
But the kids do often play on the edge of the street in front of their houses, a trade-off because space is at a premium in yards among so many neighbourhoods built these days because of the almighty dollar to maximize profits for developers. Still, that shouldn’t be a problem because the roadway in the development is not busy.
Stratas are becoming a bone of contention because there’s too many rules. Don’t do this, don’t do that. You can’t write an itinerary of what people should be doing with their lives 24/7.
The feedback to this story has exploded. Elections and political stories aside, this is destined to be the hottest topic of the year.