to judge this stranger with his child for road safety?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

The street I was driving down is a fairly small, residential street off a busier road. There is parking down one side of it for the top half of the street, and then parking down the other side for the bottom half - so if you drive from top to bottom, you're passing a row of parked cars on your right for a bit, then there's a space in the middle that is two cars wide with no passing, then you're passing cars on your left for the rest of the way. Got the layout?

Understandably it gets quite blocked up sometimes and it is busier than you might expect, as at around 6 everyone is going home and driving down there.

As I was passing, there was a man holding his child's hand walking along the pavement. Child about, I guess, 7? As he walked along they kept meeting people on the pavement coming the other way, so he casually nudged the child into the road to pass them.

The second time he did this I was coming up right behind them. There were cars to my right so I couldn't get far away from the child. There was just about room for him, and I was crawling along at about 15mph as you do in that situation, but I was still pretty shocked. The man wasn't even looking behind him to see if there was traffic, he was just assuming it was safe for the child to get nudged out into the road.

What would you have done, and am I being ridiculous, judgy-panted childless woman who doesn't know what's what?

FWIW I nudged my horn because he clearly didn't have the foggiest a car was there, but it didn't do any good as he didn't seem to realize I was honking at him

Gah. To correct my over-complicated description of what I promise is a fairly simple layout 'then there's a space in the middle that is two cars wide with no parking'.

Not idea, but I think you are being harsh.
If it's that congested with parked cars everyone should be travelling very slowly, anyway.

ideal obviuously, I hope.

You are the driver. Maneuver around them. YABU

ragged - well, I was slow, 15mph is slow. But I take your point I may be overreacting - like I say, childless/judgy.

mynew - where to, exactly? Normally, to be fair, you'd expect a pedestrian to give way to a car if he or she is on the road - but I'm hardly going to blame a child, it wasn't his fault.

All I could do was keep behind him, which I did. The point of telling you about the parked cars was to explain I couldn't just dodge over to the other side of the road.

No way, pedestrians have the right of way. You the driver have to give way to the pedestrian.

And if you can't dodge to the other side, you wait until you have room.

Um ... no, they don't, actually.

Why would a pedestrian have right of way?

Why do they have right of way?

It's just ... surely when you see a car coming, you don't step out in front, right? Especially you don't nudge your child out in front?

Pedestrians have right of way. For pretty obvious reasons. If you hit them, you'll kill them and remain relatively unscathed. Or hurt them a lot.

because if you as a driver hit a pedestrian You will be responsible and I suspect would feel terrible guilt. If you're going slow and see a hazard you stop or slow down even more depending on the hazard.

But I still wouldn't nudge my child into the road.

He shouldn't have nudged the child into the road, so YANBU

I would agree that the Dad should be on the outside of the road while the son on the inside.

However, you the driver can see that the road is congested and should give way to pedestrians regardless who is on the outside or inside of the road.

Ah ok, thanks for explaining. Obviously I would - and did - do whatever necessary to avoid hitting a pedestrian. But I would also do whatever to avoid hitting, say, a car going the wrong way up the motorway ... that's why I didn't think of it as right of way. I was taught that you only have right of way as a pedestrian if you're already crossing a road or on marked crossings, but that may well have been more to do with safety than law.

It's not like I want to know 'should I now down this child next time' (!), just I was surprised he'd not either walk in the road himself or go single file on the pavement, rather than putting the child in the road.

Pedestrians have right of way. You could see what was going to happen, so unhoick your judgy pants before they strangle you!

I would think someone who nudged his child onto the pavement, rather than move himself, was thoughtless and not really on the ball, caring-wise

sorry off the pavement

Ok, obviously I phrased my OP wrong.

Despite what it sounds like, I have not actually been scraping small child-bits off the wheels of my car.

I did hang back. Obviously.

However, I also wondered a bit about the dad nudging his child into the path of an oncoming car without so much as a backward glance. I did (which I think is right according to the highway code) honk to let him know I was there.

What I am trying to establish is not whether I should or should not run over a child. I kinda know the answer to that one. I want to know whether you'd do the same as this bloke, or whether it'd strike you as a bit poor.

Yanbu to be concerned. He should put the child's safety first, and either go single file or walk on the road himself if he can't be bothered. I would be judgey too at an adult setting such a careless example of attitude to traffic and roads to a young child. Yes you as a driver have a responsibility to take care, but if he kept his kid on the pavement in the first place, no problem!

Oops, cross posted. Yeah, that's what I felt gaf. Dunno, maybe I am in a minority on that one.

I am really confused as to why people think it's OK for the parent to have the child on the outside, nudge the child into the road without looking and do this repeatedly. It's the road, where cars are. If a pedestrian always unquestionably has right of way, why bother with pedestrian crossings? We should just randomly walk out into the road when we want to cross. OP, I think you are NBU.

She is judging the man for nudging his child into the road without looking to check for traffic - whose right of way it was is utterly irrelevant - it was a stupid and dangerous thing for him to do!

Pedestrians have a responsibilty for their own safety as well. Obviously OP would not plough ahead regardless. In this case, the father wasn't showing responsibility for his child, and not teaching road safety.

OP - you being childless is not a reason to be apologetic about your reactions It's common sense. If anything, I'd think people with children would agree with you.

YANBU - whatever the rights/wrongs of who was parked where I'd still never nudge my child off the kerb.

Thanks all.

gaf - I just wanted to be clear in case someone felt it was off for me to judge a parent when I'm not one myself. Or maybe you'd have told me some well-known parenting fact, I can never quite predict that sort of thing.