There’s a place for roadway soliciting

You’ve seen them as you drive to the grocery store, the hardware store or wherever you go, especially on sunny days when people are out.

A firefighter lugging a giant rubber boot up and down the median strip. A person wearing a smile and a yellow Lions Club vest gesticulating with rolls of candy. People with fistfuls of Tootsie Rolls or little red bags of peanuts.

And then there is the guy shaking the nondescript bucket, with no uniform and no discernible identification. Maybe lingering a little too long, maybe rapping a knuckle on your window.

It’s a really mixed bag out there.

You may roll your window down and toss in a buck, or you may roll your window up and stare ... straight ... ahead.

Is this drive-through charity? A nuisance? A danger?

Leaders in many suburbs have debated whether to regulate roadside charity solicitors. Wheeling is the latest. Village officials are mulling whether to ban them altogether or restrict them from collecting along main thoroughfares. The reasons cited — public safety and nuisance.

But there, as in some other towns, the issue isn’t cut and dried. The village board Tuesday night wisely postponed a vote on an all-out ban so officials could discuss alternatives.

“It seems like we’re prohibiting our own citizens from being out there doing charitable works and it’s getting to be where we’re controlling things that maybe we ought to just let roll,” Trustee Dave Vogel noted.

We haven’t heard that solicitors have been hit or caused accidents, but we understand the need to guard against that at the fastest, most-congested intersections in town.

Antioch last year decided to limit tag day sales on Deep Lake Road, Route 173, Route 83 and Route 59 and near railroad crossings. Carpentersville curtailed solicitations at Huntley Road and Route 31, where there is a steep hill.

We also appreciate the desire to keep motorists from feeling threatened or simply overwhelmed by the number of hawkers. Antioch, for instance, won’t permit a charitable group that is headquartered more than 15 miles from town unless it is a major national charity, such as the Red Cross.

Such restrictions, along with ensuring solicitors have permits and wear proper credentials, are good ways of keeping donations local and the pretenders in check.

Arlington Heights and Mount Prospect have put limits on the number of times or the window of time during which a group can solicit.

But what any town must weigh before outlawing solicitation entirely is the value of the organizations themselves. To many of them, this method is a primary source of revenue — money that helps children, the infirm, the poor. And with their membership graying and fewer young people to fill their ranks, the organizations have a hard enough time achieving their missions.