Not Getting Any Younger

On a recent Safe Routes to School Walk Audit, the young man in the photo (not Choice One’s Brad Walterbush on the right and definitely not Craig Eley in the middle) helped us understand how he and other kids walk to school each day. Considering the way this student fits in with our traffic engineers in this photo, it’s no wonder that Mitch asked the quoted question.

How young is too young to be an engineer? We know that a two-year-old is just about qualified to be a surveyor. And we know that a nine-year-old is probably smart enough to write the super long MS Excel equations required to be an engineer (or the equally important pizza consumption calculator). Yet our 12-year-old friend isn’t old enough to drive yet, which means he can’t circle roundabouts again and again and AGAIN just for pure fun, and therefore can’t be a traffic engineer yet. (Seriously, avoid roundabouts if Craig Eley is driving.)

While he may be a little too young to be a full-fledged engineer, hopefully our student friend knows he’s getting a head start in engineering by learning from a traffic legend like Craig. And regardless of his education or age, he has the first and most important aspect of being a pretty cool engineer well in-hand: he’s wearing green!