Ice cream trucks are kind of a rite of passage. No matter where you live, when you’re a kid and you hear the ice cream truck coming down the street, you grab a couple of dollars and go running. Until recently, it was a must during the summertime. But there is one city where ice cream trucks are banned.
Ice cream trucks are banned in Indianola, Iowa. If the people of Indianola want ice cream, they have to go to a grocery store or to an ice cream shop.
But the big question is: why are the trucks banned in Indianola? It’s kind of a sad story. The ban started in 1967 when a little girl was hit by a car and killed after buying an ice cream from a truck. It wasn’t even an ice cream truck that hit her. Clearly, this was a bit of an overreaction to an incredibly tragic event.
Business owners and people trying to bring ice cream trucks to the area have tried to get the ban overturned but it seems to still be in place.
A few cities have banned ice cream trucks in the past
But Indianola isn’t the only city that has a ban on ice cream trucks. The trucks were banned in Elgin, Illinois for 45 years before the ban was lifted in 2018.
The village of Riverside, Illinois still bans ice cream trucks. They thought about repealing the ban in 2020, but it doesn’t look like there is any news on whether it was repealed or not.
The ice cream truck also used to be banned in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan but a 9-year-old lobbied to get rid of the ban and he won! The ban was lifted in 2001.
In more recent news, ice cream trucks were banned from a couple of neighborhoods in London in 2019 to crack down on the air pollution the trucks produce. While it’s a valiant effort, banning the mass pollution created by corporations would make a much bigger impact than a couple of ice cream trucks.
I am very glad ice cream trucks were not banned in my neighborhood. I don’t know what I would have done without my Tweety ice cream on the stick.
What’s your favorite thing to get from an ice cream truck? Let us know in the comments below!