I live in a road with a school

No one works there it's literally country roads, there's no job to be had. The only jobs in the village are either working at the school or at the local corner shop so 99 percent of the village don't work here. We don't even have a post office it's a very small rural village on the outskirts of a small town.

I live there because I live in the house that I grew up in and it's local to my grandparents who are in their 80's and I help care for. When we forst moved here I had a job that was 100 percent home based and my husband had his own company but covid ended both of those job prospects as both companies went bankrupt and so we had to get new jobs but weren't in a financial position to move even if we had wanted to uproot our family.

I feel like working locally is something that may be the norm in bigger towns and cities but definitley not places like where I live, places like my village would be purely retired pensioners if you only lived where you work.

They surveyed our local primary. 610 pupils. 370 cars (some more than one child)... 80 kids walk. But they take kids from all over town.

370 cars take up a lot of space.

The reality a lot of parents could park 5/10 minutes from school and walk. Also often this would mean no difference in time once you factor in the traffic around actual school, however people are often stupid and lazy.

When DD was in primary if I had to drive I’d park on the main road on the way out of town, and walk there. Much easier/quicker than sitting nose to nose in cars outside the school gates.

Speak to the school and suggest a ‘drive by’ drop off is implemented. My daughter’s school has a member of staff outside and cars drive along, line up and stop briefly in the road outside the gate and the staff member helps the kids out of the back of the car (if they’re not able to get out themselves) and they go straight into the school gate, no need for parents to park the cars up. They just drive straight off. It works a treat.

Well, when people choose to live a long way from work and from school, it inevitably creates situations where more people will be forced to drive everywhere, including on school runs. That creates social costs.

Can’t wait till the UK has pay-per-mile road pricing and everyone is forced to think a little bit harder about where they live and how far out it’s sensible to live if you work in town.

Where I live we do have a sheltered cycle path.

The bloody dog walkers use it, even though there are ample other pavements and paths for them to use. Often with the dogs off lead, too.

And then when you cycle on the roads, White Van Man or Very Important and In A Rush SUV Driver tries to kill you.

I cycle to my local parkrun but I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that I am going to be injured if I carry on. Either by a dog, or a driver. Or both working in concert.

People could park 5 minutes away and walk though. And you might need to get to work, but a lot of parents don't.

I know that, because they arrive in my road between 2.15 and 2.30 and sit there with their engines running until the kids come out between 3.05 and 3.20 (there are two schools next to each other). Even if they are coming from work, they would easily have time to drive home and walk back in that sort of timeframe.

I love the pp who blocked in the CF who parked on her drive! Hopefully that concentrated his mind a bit and he didn't do it again.

OK, I’m just confused as to why you live so far out in the countryside if neither of you works there.

Why be confused, it's none of your bloody business where someone chooses to live or why! I don't live anywhere near my work either, why would I?

I think people generally accept that not everyone can drive, it seems less accepted that we can't all ride a bike.

OK, I’m just confused as to why you live so far out in the countryside if neither of you works there.

Only if you're comparing a new bakfiets with a secondhand car. You can pick up a secondhand bakfiets for £850, if you can find a secondhand car at that price you should be asking what's wrong with it. You won't find a new car for less than £13k. Then there's the running costs, bakfiets cost peanuts to run, a couple of hundred a year for maintenance plus bacon sandwiches to fuel it. The average car costs several thousand pounds a year to run.

Bakfiets cost over two grand!! An electric one is four grand. That's basically car levels of money.

Is there somewhere safe for the parents to park and walk their children? Eg a local village hall.

Look at School Streets online where they close streets between certain hours to stop parents parking there, expect for residents an delivery drivers etc.

Many are dreadful. Poor kids having them as parents. We’ve tried contacting the school, but the parents override everyone.🙄

No not much gets built round us, he builds like warehouses, sky scrapers sometimes works on runways. That's why he's out so early and back late it's either a long commute or he'll be hours and hours away hence the not home in the week, the company houses him if he's a certain distance away.

Do people who sit in traffic Jams also have cushy lives

I also managed to have a lunch break so I'd just call that poor time management 😂

They're very wrong as well. I'm a lone parent with a full time job. I would walk the 40 minutes to drop him at the breakfast club then another 40 minutes to work and repeat in the afternoon!

I'm almost impressed by how you've managed to make the parent who walks each way sound lazy 🤣

Working locally in the countryside around you?

He's an engineer and is either out the house from around 6am to late or works away completely in the week and only returns at the weekend depending on what site he's working on.

YADNU
If someone parks in your driveway, park behind them, or call the police. Sadly, I don't think the police will do very much. Tge school definitely can't do anything. At best, they could send a reminder to parents.

You need to contact the school and the police, and keep contacting the school if they don't do anything about it.

Ours has gotten that bad that the council have introduced a month of 'bad parking watch' so you're asked to take photos of repeat offenders and then they will go out to them or send a letter.

Some parents are just incredibly lazy. I live two streets away from the school so it takes longer to drive than walk, EVERY DAY a lady in the street closer to the school gets in her car, parks on the zig zags and takes her child to school, then drives back home. I honestly can't understand how lazy you can be.

The UK needs to get a grip on the OTT supervision of kids, even quite big ones. If kids are over 7 or so, it needs to be acceptable for them to hang out in a playground unsupervised. The UK is so weird on this kind of thing.

I would like to see the UK having sheltered cycle paths throughout rural areas the way the Netherlands does - it doesn’t lead to anyone in the countryside giving up their car, but it does at least give older kids and teenagers some independence and reduces the burden on parents.

Tiredmama, you mention working from home/in an office, but what does your kids’ father do for a living?