Parking lots bring a lot of issues due to small space and people being unaware of their surroundings, leading to many Rogers students crashing into each other.

Almost every week there is at least one accident between the four parking lots, according to former RHS security guard, Danny Wolfe. Sometimes drivers will drive over curbs to get out of school faster and to get to better parking spots.

An accident that occurred recently is a staff member backing into another car when they were leaving after school.

The worst accident Wolfe has seen is a student losing control of their vehicle and ending up down the embankment in the senior lot, crashing into the fence.

RHS has about 600 parking spaces within the student lots, and as of right now all of them are full — many students park at Heritage, as well. That means that over one third of the students drive to school every day.

That leads the parking lots to be a fairly big part of school, school safety and how students feel coming to school overall.

Isaiah Wood, a senior, said, “I often see a lot of people driving too fast, driving over curbs and going the wrong direction.”

Wolfe had been a Rogers security guard for the last five years before taking a similar position at Emerald Ridge. Before that, he worked as a security officer for about 15 years as an armed security guard for apartments, businesses, and hospitals.

“Right now, we aren’t too heavy on tickets but there is accidents that happen, about one or two a week. But there’s been a lot of other activity in the parking lots,” Wolfe said.

Even the staff at RHS are subject to receiving tickets whenever they don’t update their information with the security office. So, they don’t know if the car is a staff car or not- and they hand out a ticket. Usually, it can be easily cleared up.

Besides the incidents involving cars, there are plenty of other situations that take place in the parking lots that aren’t ideal.

“There’s a lot of other activities in the parking lots. Vaping, marijuana, just stuff people shouldn’t be doing in cars,” Wolfe said. “That’s a big reason why we kind of crack down on the parking lots.”

As of right now RHS security isn’t sure how they are going to put a stop to all of the illegal activity and incidents taking place in the parking lots. As RHS has four different parking lots, it’s hard to monitor every lot at once as well as the rest of school grounds.

According to Wolfe, the issues can be fixed in one simple way: students being more responsible, watching how they park, drive, and paying attention to their surroundings.